February 28, 2008
Village Of Schoolcraft Leverages Hosted VoIP for New Village Offices
By Anshu Shrivastava, TMCnet Contributing Editor
Rural Communications has announced that it has deployed its Hosted PBX solution to the new offices at the Village of Schoolcraft.
Funded by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) with a low cost loan in January of 2005 to build an IP Network in Southwest Michigan, the company has begun offering a full suite of hosted solutions that replace company’s outdated PBX ( News - Alert) and Key Systems.
Village of Schoolcraft says that when it prepared to move into its new office location, the phone system was one of its top priorities, and it required an affordable yet flexible phone system.
The Village of Schoolcraft selected Rural Communications to install its VoIP based Hosted PBX system that would serve the Village staff with the latest in Internet and voice communications technology, according to Village of Schoolcraft representatives.
Rural Communications RC Connect Hosted PBX solution -- a self managed, scalable option using Cisco ( News - Alert) 7961 IP Phones -- perfectly fitted with the needs of the staff, according to the representatives.
Raymond Bonkowski, IT director at Rural Communications said in a statement that his company’s RC Connect solution eliminates “expensive maintenance contracts, allows the customer to make many of their own move, adds and changes to the station and the stations location, and provide a web tool that allows them to manage all their features, so staying connected in a busy environment has never been easier.”
“With Homeland Security issues aboard, Michigan's unpredictable weather, and not to mention flu season, the Village staff can go online and quickly create or activate a hunt group to reroute calls to a staff members home, mobile number, and/or alternative location(s),” he added.
Cheri Lutz, manager at Village of Schoolcraft, indicated that she was interested in VoIP, and not having to buy PBX equipment that could be outdated in a couple of years was very appealing to her.
She also said that she liked the idea of just having the phones and not all the other equipment that traditionally goes along with a phone system, and added, “Once our CAT-5 cable was installed in the building, it didn't take much time for them to come and configure the individual phones," explained Lutz, "and we were up and running.”
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Internet Protocol (IP) | X | IP stands for Internet Protocol, a data-networking protocol developed throughout the 1980s. It is the established standard protocol for transmitting and receiving data
in packets over the Internet. I...more |
Private Branch Exchange (PBX) | X | Originally, telephone features were provided by telephone central office switching systems, often called CENTREX.�PBX systems emerged as customers wanted to have more calling features and control over...more |
Voice over IP (VoIP) | X | A real-time communications system that converts voice into digital packets containing media and signaling data that travel over networks using Internet Protocol....more |
(source: http://hosted-communication.tmcnet.com/topics/hosted-voip/articles/21739-village-schoolcraft-leverages-hosted-voip-new-village-offices.htm)
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