Even the lure of phone systems that withstand disasters combined with the benefits of unified messaging don’t outweigh the costs to bring IP communications to college campuses, according to a survey by ACUTA, the Association for Communications Professionals in Higher Education.
While as many as 48 per cent of respondents say they find a range of very attractive features with VoIP, 42 per cent see no compelling benefits to retiring traditional phone systems in favor of IP, according to the survey of 279 ACUTA members released last month at the group’s Summit on IP Communications in Higher Education.
Some schools veer away from the technology because their old systems still work. “I have an installed legacy base, and I don’t hear anyone screaming to me that they have a killer app that only VoIP can supply,” said Tammy Closs, assistant vice-president of communications and systems infrastructure at Duke University.
Other schools find the cost of installing VoIP to be daunting. The University of California at Irvine calculated it would cost US$8.5 million to replace its current 1985 Ericsson PBX and Digital Sound voice mail system.
US$3.3 million of that would be for power over Ethernet upgrades and uninterruptible power supplies (UPS) to keep phones up when electric service fails, said Brian Buckler, director of network and telecom operations at the school. IP phones alone would cost US$3.1 million, he said.
Still, the school is moving ahead with VoIP, deploying it in new buildings where the costs of network infrastructure and UPSs are covered by the construction costs. The network upgrades needed to support VoIP reliably have been made because of increased demand for a reliable data network, Buckler said, and he urges other schools to do the same.
“Making data networks rock-solid is a feather in your cap,” he said. “Then paying US$50,000 for call control for a VoIP implementation is chump change. You can buy old phones from the green market.”
Bring on resiliency Because VoIP systems are distributed, they are more resilient when equipment and links do fail, said Scott Kincaid, CIO of Butler University in Indianapolis, where an end-of-life PBX led to a new VoIP system that adds important new features the old system lacked.
“We had no campus [public address] system,” Kincaid said. “Post-9/11, the administration was nervous. What if we need to do an emergency broadcast?” With the VoIP network, emergency messages can be sent as text messages or voice announcements, he said.
Schools are also worried about installing VoIP because it is difficult keep current a list of where each IP phone is located, information necessary for E-911 services. The phones can be moved to any network switch port, and they will log themselves on, but there are no automated ways to register current locations.
As a result some schools don’t allow VoIP in residences. At Texas A&M University, for example, school counsel forbids VoIP in graduate family housing. Calls to 911 might not generate accurate information about where the call is coming from.
“The lawyers say we will not do VoIP in residences with families with small kids on campus,” said Walt Magnussen, director for telecommunications at the school. One-third of respondents say security concerns loom. “It’s a problem, but it can be overcome,” said Melissa Muth, director of network engineering at the University of Pennsylvania.
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