The University of Oxford Leverages InTechnology's SIP Trunking and Virtual PBX Services

Today, any business no matter its size can benefit greatly from a virtual PBX system which makes direct communications simpler and affordable.

Recently, The University of Oxford selected InTechnology, a U.K. provider of managed voice and data services, for SIP trunking and virtual PBX capabilities across Janet, the private network for research and education.

SIP trunking provides true converged voice and data onto common IP connections, reducing or eliminating ISDN line rental charges.

Roy Farrow, divisional product director of InTechnology said in a statement, "SIP trunks offer a host of capabilities above and beyond their ISDN30 counterparts, such as allowing IP-based data services to use the same pipe as a voice service, enhanced disaster recovery features and the fantastic flexibility to scale up and down to meet peak demand.

Officials said that while the university's core voice network was highly resilient, all the ISDN30 circuit fibers passed through the same small area of central Oxford. This was a major issue of concern for the Oxford University Computing Service due to the fact that if something went wrong with these circuit fibers, the entire staff and students at the university would not be able to make or receive any calls.

Driven by this potential downtime, OUCS felt the need to send voice traffic from its Cisco IP-virtual PBX infrastructure over its high bandwidth and physically diverse Janet IP network connections.

After speaking to many major suppliers, OUCS zeroed on InTechnology, who is a Janet-connected provider, and was able to work alongside the voice team at OUCS as well as Cisco engineers to successfully implement SIP trunking across the Janet network.

InTechnology has helped the university to see multiple advantages including increased resilience, reduced supplier dependency, significant scalability and even reduced call costs.

Alan Hillyer, head of telecoms, OUCS added, "InTechnology has provided us with an enterprise-class solution, while meeting a need that some of the bigger carriers are turning their back on.

In my opinion, InTechnology were really quite brave and entrepreneurial in recognizing that their existing ultra high bandwidth Janet connectivity, our own fat pipe into Janet, and Janet's high capacity meant that the lack of QoS on Janet was irrelevant. The call quality is fantastic, probably better than standard ISDN30 quality. It's very stable and we're really pleased with it."

Deepika Mala is a contributing editor for virtual-pbx. To read more of her articles, please visit her columnist page.

Edited by Jamie Epstein