Wolf Creek Public Schools in Alberta, Canada, is using Alcatel-Lucent’s (
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Alert) enterprise voice and data networking solutions to deliver the communications necessary to build learning communities linking teachers with parents and students. The Canadian school district has built a district-wide voice over IP
system spanning its 32 sites serving 7,000 students and a staff of 900.
Assistant Superintendent with Wolf Creek Public Schools, Gary Spence explained in a
statement that one of their major goals in Wolf Creek is to build their culture of live collaboration and voice communications is an essential ingredient of that effort. The district wanted to build the model of what an enterprise-level voice system should look like in a school district. He added that Alcatel-Lucent made significant code changes to meet their need for special features.
Wolf Creek picked Alcatel-Lucent in 2004 to build and grow a next-generation network that would leverage the Alberta SuperNet to support advanced applications such as pervasive/secure wireless access, videoconferencing and VoIP
. SuperNet, a high-speed, high-capacity broadband network with end-to-end QoS links Alberta government offices, schools, health-care facilities and libraries. These include approximately 4,200 connections in 429 communities.
Using a range of OmniSwitch Ethernet
switches, the district built its IP network, which provided the bandwidth and security required to serve students and faculty. Serving as the VoIP solution, Alcatel-Lucent’s OmniPCX Enterprise allowed Wolf Creek to centralize its main voice switches at the district headquarters and extend remote call servers with back up circuits and resiliency at each school building.
Alcatel-Lucent explained that with this implementation, the district was able to reduce 127 voice trunk lines to two ISDN
PRIs and 34 voice trunk lines. Also, they could route all internal calls across the SuperNet and use the telecom lines only for external calls. Moreover, all internal long distance charges were eliminated and monthly line charges were reduced by a third.
According to Spence, the dramatic increase in access and the ease-of-use of the Alcatel-Lucent system are big advantages for their district, their staff, and ultimately their students.
Chief Operating Officer of Alcatel-Lucent’s Enterprise activities, Tom Burns said that Wolf Creek is a bellwether implementation for Alcatel-Lucent because the administration started with a goal to use communications to improve how education is delivered. He added that school districts are an important customer base to Alcatel-Lucent, and the savvy use of technology by Wolf Creek helps them to reinforce their leadership in this market.
In another
announcement, Alcatel-Lucent said that they are offering a new interactive IPTV
portal, which is to be implemented in a field trial for the Deutsche Telekom’ (
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Alert) s “T-City” project in Friedrichshafen within the coming months. Through the T-City project, Deutsche Telekom is poised to improve the quality of life for T-City citizens by implementing IT and telecommunications projects involving new technology and applications that are relevant to various aspects of city life.
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Anuradha Shukla is a contributing editor for TMCnet, covering call centers, CRM and information technology. To see more of her articles, please visit her columnist page.
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