There is a widely held view that migrating to a VOIP phone system saves money. It is mentioned in publication repeatedly, both in journals and in marketing material. School boards are sold VOIP based on the premise that it will save them money. Outside of those who are intimately involved with the planning, installation, and maintenance of these systems, the impression is almost unanimous. The fact is, however, that VOIP is not cheaper, even if it is better.
My intention is not to bash VOIP. In fact it has been a wonderful addition to our district. What I want to do is reframe the way the decision to migrate to VOIP is made. The assumption is that one can leverage the existing data network to support all IP based services like phones, video surveillance, intercoms, video streaming, etc. The perception is that because the network exists you don’t need to replicate infrastructure for multiple services, and hence you save money. Numbers are thrown around like reduced cost for monthly telephone lines, and eliminating maintenance costs to telephone companies. Within the sales pitch there is little reference to the expansion necessary to accommodate the load of all these new services, or the staff necessary to secure and maintain these systems. I challenge those who use these products to say they save money.
We need to reexamine how we understand the benefits of VOIP telephony. Technology provides more flexibility, efficiency and a more effective communication system that we can customize. It has opened the door to possibilities that we had not known were available to us, and allowed us to expect more from what were mere desk phones.
I have installed a VOIP system and I am extremely happy with it. We now have phones in every classroom and we are in total control of programming and functionality. But there is a cost. We needed to make sure our data network was secure and that we had adequate power and switches in closets to maintain integrity in the system and calls. One of our inside technical staff has been assigned to manage all of the users (500) which would have been done by the phone company in the past. If there are any issues or problems our network administrator is responsible for repair. We have added a layer of complexity as we connect to a phone company in resolving possible issues.
The IT department had never before been directly responsible for student safety or for handling critical downtime. Our most valuable resources running on the network were the financial and student systems. These rarely go down, and when they do it has no impact on the safety of students and staff. Now, downtime is more than an inconvenience. We have always needed to plan for redundancy, disaster recovery, battery back up, data backup, and monitoring of equipment to anticipate issues down the road. Reliability has always been important, but now uptime is critical.
In the past the telephone utility provided us with a stable, shared service. They consolidated the network hardware in environmentally controlled, constantly maintained central offices. As we move towards VOIP we are essentially creating our own isolated networks. We have given up the shared environment assumed some of the responsibilities of the utility ourselves.
Further, we must analyse the long terms costs of a VOIP system. There is the costs of training the technical staff as people, products, and security issues change, and there is the cost of new switches and batteries, which only last five years. Because the entire network runs on the same hardware, replacing VOIP components does benefit the entire network, but these are no longer optional upgrades. They are critical maintenance issues.
My VOIP system has given us more flexibility in terms of a phone system. It still makes calls in and out and functions as a phone but has evolved to be another computer on the network that needs to be managed as other computers do. Our district has 2000 workstations and we have added 500 phones which is an increase of 25%. Our staffing has not increased but our responsibilities have. If I compare the yearly maintenance costs for the traditional system with the current costs I find that they are about the same (this is not a scientific comparison, but it comes from an educated perspective). The difference is the shift in responsibility from the phone company and Buildings and Grounds, to Technical Services. We undertake this shift in order to take advantage of the features that a VOIP system offers, not to save money.
The intent of this article is to illustrate the typical voices that are heard when moving to any technology. Saving money becomes the mantra that drowns out discussion of the real benefits of VOIP. I am hoping to take away the notion that technology saves money and replace it with the notion that technology enhances our ability to do our jobs, increase flexibility and customization, and gives options that we had never thought about before. It is essential that we make this transition because VOIP has become the primary option for large phone deployments. It has become an unavoidable technology and we need to be able to talk about its real implications.
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