Frequently Asked Questions Regarding New Phone System
Why does the new number for Sugar Grove Combined School have a Marion 783 prefix, instead of a Sugar Grove 677 prefix?
The main call processing equipment for our new Voice Over IP phone system is located in the School Board's Central Office in Marion. We have a Cisco voice gateway that connects to the Public Switched Telephone Network through Embarq's telephone switch in Marion. Our connection to Embarq consists of a digital circuit that replaces 23 separate analog phone lines and lowers our monthly telephone bill by about 15%. Because the digital circuit terminates on Embarq's Marion phone switch, the numbers assigned to it must have Marion prefixes (780, 781, 782, 783, etc.) When someone dials 783-2459--the new number assigned to Sugar Grove--our phone system routes the call over our computer network to the office at Sugar Grove Combined School. See A Tale of Two Phone Numbers below.
A Tale of Two Phone Numbers
When an outside caller dials 783-2459, Embarq routes the call to the School Board's digital line in Marion. When that call is received at the School Board's Central Office, VoIP equipment routes the call across the Wide Area Network to Sugar Grove Combined School. When a caller dials 677-3311, the call is routed through Embarq's Sugar Grove switch to Sugar Grove Combined School over an analog phone line. What's the difference? The analog line represented by 677-3311 can only handle one call at a time; the digital line represented by 783-2459 can handle up to 23 calls at once. The result? Far fewer busy signals when you call Sugar Grove Combined School.
How long will we be able to use the old 677-3311 number to reach Sugar Grove Combined School?
From now on. We plan to keep the 677-3311 phone line as a backup in case we have a problem with the computer network; however, we urge you to begin using the 783-2459 number right away. You are much less likely to get a busy signal when you dial 783-2459.
Do all schools have VoIP phone systems?
At this time, Chilhowie High, Chilhowie Middle, Marion Middle, Marion Intermediate, Marion Senior High, Marion Primary, Northwood Middle, Rich Valley Elementary, Sugar Grove Combined, and the Central Office have VoIP systems. We are budgeting equipment money to replace the old phone systems at other schools with VoIP phones. We expect to have all schools converted to VoIP by the end of 2008.
What are the advantages of a VoIP phone system?
We estimate that the VoIP system will save us about $6,500 a year in telephone bills, when all of our schools are on the system. That savings comes from replacing analog phone lines with digital circuits and decreasing the number of phone lines we lease from Embarq. We are able to decrease the number of lines we lease because it no longer requires two lines to make a call from one school to another. VoIP enables us to bypass the public telephone network. That also frees up our leased phone lines to accept more calls coming in from the outside, which means fewer busy signals for people calling our schools.
VoIP also enables us to manage our phone system internally. Our Information Technology Department can handle phone system additions and moves now. In the past, we paid outside vendors to perform those tasks. The new VoIP phones are also widely available. In the past, we were stuck with having to use phones designed for a particular vendor's phone system. If that system became obsolete, we had a great deal of difficulty obtaining parts and service.