What direction should a municipality take in moving to VoIP?

What direction should a municipality take in moving to VoIP?

I am commissioner of telecommunications for a city in Illinois. We are a growing community of 50k, and we are exploring replacing current municipal communications (wireline SBC) with VOIP.

We are starting from scratch, but need to be brought up to speed in a hurry as this is a priority of the Mayor.

Any assistance or direction you could give me as to other municipalities who have done this would be greatly appreciated. Also, what should our first steps be?

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As a first step to lower telephony costs and increase productivity for the city's offices the internal communications infrastructure can be replaced with a VoIP infrastructure which will utilize the private network for calls between sites. The VoIP solution chosen should be based upon open standards so that it can later integrate seamlessly with the service offering the city plans to offer to its residents and businesses.

For the city government offices a SIP based solution such as the one from Zultys can be used. The Zultys solution allows for voice, video, fax and data communications between offices and integrates features such as presence and instant messaging. This will reduce costs and boost productivity within the city government.

To become an Internet Telephony Service Provider for residents and businesses within the city you can talk to companies such as Sonus and Broadsoft. These companies make products that allow SIP connectivity to businesses and residences and also have the ability to connect to the existing PSTN. These companies have worked with many Internet Telephony service providers to improve their offering.

This was first published in March 2004