Shoalhaven council ditches PABX for VoIP

Shoalhaven City Council has rolled out IP telephony afterwards its 12-year-old PABX system was deemed unusable by council staff.

A spokesperson from the council's telecommunications department said the maturity of VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) innovation enabled the upgrade.

The life of the system of eight to 12 years

"Future-proofing our solution for the life of the system of eight to 12 years was a big consideration and VoIP was the only real alternative," the spokesperson said.

Support for the aging hardware and software of the council's PABX system had degraded to the point that maintaining it "was no longer an acceptable business risk".

Policy shift

"End users have had to go deal with a policy shift and research up-skilling to allow them to take full advantage of the potential efficiency gains of the systems through status visibility and more flexible call routing alternatives."

ROI will be achieved across the council's 40 satellite sites over a two to three year period. "This is mainly through reductions in PSTN [public switched telephone network] and leased line carrier services and reduced call costs. The flexibility of the system to deal with outages as well provides a level of business continuity that was impossible to provide previously."

"Overall we are now able to better deliver on the specific call routing requirements of the individual groups of council whilst as well delivering a far more consistent calling experience for our rate payers."

During the then and there 12 months staff will focus on completing the rollout of VoIP to the remaining council sites, with the spokesperson saying that they hope to replace its main corporate operational applications in the process.