Education Industry- wireless Project case study

About the company

This school district is a public educational entity residing in Lynwood, California, which is comprised of several K-12 and adult schools spread among the entire city. This entity provides almost all of the education for the 70,000 residents of Lynwood - from adult school, high school, middle school, as well as elementary school students, most of which are socioeconomically disadvantaged.

CHALLENGES

Phone System Clarity, Uptime, and Efficiency

The district operated through refurbished non-IP phones which made managed services an essential service to them. The phone wires on city electrical wires made their lines extremely susceptible to the surrounding environment. Rain was often a risk factor for uptime, as their service provider AT&T oftentimes had to come and restore outages. Apart from unfair weather conditions disrupting the vital functions of the phone lines, the worn-out conditions of the phones due to age and degradation over time, made day-to-day communication difficult. Another issue was when a new teacher took over a new classroom, the extension reflected the old teacher’s name and extension. This made the communication confusing for the staff and parents seeking to get in contact with a specific instructor.

Connectivity

The district's legacy Avaya G650 PBX systems were no longer supported by Avaya. Therefore, there was a shortage of technicians who could competently program the aging digital phone systems. However, through a Managed Services contract, pm2net was able to restore the school district’s ability to be flexible by; reprogramming the PBX legacy system on premises whenever teachers moved or relocated to other classrooms. These changes allowed teachers and staff to be able to communicate with the students’ families or call out if an emergency occurred.

System Updates

There were issues with connecting to the warehouse, consisting of 5 to 6 IP-based Avaya phones. The issue arose from the migration process; switching from old HP switches to Brocade switches that disabled phone functionality.

Assessment and solution

Through a Managed Services contract, PM2NET deployed seasoned phone experts who were able to restore the school district’s ability to be flexible by reprogramming the PBX legacy system on premises whenever teachers moved or relocated to other classrooms. These changes allowed teachers and staff to be able to communicate with the students’ families, or call out if an emergency occurred. After a walkthrough of the site, the engineers were able to determine why specific phone issues existed at their warehouse. The engineers investigated the switches at the warehouse to see if they were working properly. Upon investigation, it was discovered that the Avaya PBX was working as it should, but the switches were not trunked properly, which made communication impossible. The correct trunking was implemented, and the warehouse phones were restored.

advantages

Capabilities

Professional services were able to leverage their phone systems to utilize their full potential. The engineers were able to setup a ring group, allowing a specific department's phones to ring at the same time. Another aspect was the ring cascades, which allowed a more effective phone answering system especially when vital calls were missed.

Uptime and Extension Updates

Through this maintenance support, pm2net was also able to increase the consistency in solving long-standing issues with their phone networks and uptime. Managed services were readily available, enabling the school to have more efficient and uninterrupted communication. Extension updates were also a solution, as engineers were able to properly update phone extensions based on the accurate staff members assigned to a specific station.

Enablement

The warehouse was an important feature of the school system. With the current system, it was impossible for the school to connect with the warehouse. There was a switch from the main distribution frame and a switch from the warehouse, but the transfer of information was impossible because of data transfer was co-mingled. The engineers isolated a port on each switch, allowing seamless data transfer. Engineers also configured the phones there, with the IP addresses that the new switches had.