Telephony - Furness College

IP500 allows for future expansion plans

Growing college chooses Pennine Telecom

Following a recommendation from Avaya, a Cumbrian college called in Pennine Telecom to upgrade their telephony infrastructure.

Furness College based in Barrow-in-Furness, had been using the Avaya IP412 with legacy hardware that had long since become end of life. With over 2000 students and 180 telephone users, it was essential that the telephone system was ‘maintainable’ should any fault occur.

The college currently has 7 separate buildings all on the same site, there are plans to demolish 5 of them in the next few years to make way for a new state-of-the art college facility, linking to the existing main site. It is likely that Voice over IP (VoIP) technology will be deployed to connect these sites allowing seamless connectivity between them.

“The future re-development plans for the college started with relocating and upgrading the old telephone system. We chose Pennine Telecom following a recommendation from Avaya and as they hold Platinum accreditation we knew they had the knowledge and expertise to provide us with the right solution,” said Pete Southward Network Manager at the college.

“The new system will make it easier for people to get in touch with us as we have a fully automated system. We will be offering degree level courses soon and we needed to have an infrastructure in place to cope with demand.”

Pennine Telecom also upgraded the Voice Compression Module (VCM) which will allow the college to use VoIP across the various buildings on campus.