The What, Why, and the Competitive Advantage
You may have heard about the VoIP project, or better yet, you may have received a new telephone with additional features and functionality. CITS has been working on upgrading and advancing the voice and data communication infrastructure and deploying new VoIP telephones. There will be nearly 1000 new VoIP enabled telephones in use in UMB schools and departments this fall. CITS will continue to roll-out these new phones over the next couple of years. The following information explains what this technology is, and why we are implementing it at UMB.
What:
Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) and other IP-based communication services are contemporary and mature technology solutions. Voice “traffic” can now be transmitted over a packet-switching technology, which essentially means that voice “packets” can be sent and received like data and video “packets” over a converged campus network and across the Internet. IP communications provides the foundation for future developments in networking and telephony services. It increases the availability of modern communications products, features and functionality to our campus community while at the same time controlling infrastructure costs.
Why:
The fact is that Plain Old Telephone Services (POTS) is rapidly becoming outdated and VoIP provides services that POTS never imagined. At UMB, our current telephone equipment is at end of life, and we need to advance to a more contemporary solution. The current VoIP solution offers many new features as compared to the existing UMB telephone service, such as:
• Caller ID, Call Waiting, Call Screening, Three Way Calling, Automatic Redialing, Call Forwarding and Call Logs of Missed, Received and Placed Calls, etc • It provides much better Call Conferencing capabilities. • It offers enhanced 911, so that the physical location of the phone is automatically transmitted