Schools Transition to VoIP Ahead of Federal Funding Cuts

VoIP services allow businesses to communicate over a network that is increasingly reliable, offers crisp audio quality, and is easily integrated with other business solutions, whether they are hosted or supported onsite. Because they operate over IP-based platforms, business VoIP systems can also offer users a host of other features such as video and voice conferencing. But businesses aren’t the only ones adopting VoIP technology—more and more schools are making the switch these days too.

School systems have typically relied on federal funding for telephone services, but the money allocated for this will be dwindling in the coming years, and will completely expire in the next five or so. Traditional phone systems are costly and have rapidly become outdated in recent years. In an effort to save money on tight education budgets, schools are now turning to VoIP phone services instead. Preempting this movement ahead of federal funding cuts, one company is making sure it can provide more schools with VoIP services now.

k12itc Inc., a Kansas City-based company, offers tech solutions and personal help desk services to K-12 school districts nationwide. The company, which was recognized as the area's fastest growing company in the Kansas City Business Journal's Fast 50 section, reported an impressive 1,768 percent growth rate in June. Keeping its momentum, the company also recently opened a new data center location in Chicago to expand its cloud-based services to schools.

"Every single customer we've been talking to has been interested," explained k12itc CEO Brad Sandt. "[The cuts] are quite a hit on people's budgets. Some schools are getting upwards of $50,000, $60,000, $70,000 reimbursed in the metro, so when that disappears that's going to be on people's minds...We're putting together a service that's going to do phone service over the Internet that's going to be much more cost effective that what they've been doing before. We're really ahead of the market in the transition.”

As the economy continues to regain a careful footing, businesses are taking a closer look at their spending and are investing in more cost-effective and feature-rich solutions like VoIP, as an alternative to expensive traditional phone lines. This will surely spur continued and steady growth in the business VoIP market in the years to come.