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Telecommunications >> VoIP is for Victory

5/27/2005

By Matt Villano

Voice over the Internet Protocol may now seem ubiquitous but some schools are definitely doing it better than others.

To put it simply, VoIP is cropping up everywhere. To deem it the "next big thing" would only be to reiterate what other higher ed technology watchers (including the editors of this magazine) have been saying for years. Still, as the technology that drives voice over the Internet protocol continues to come of age, a number of colleges and universities have implemented it in new and exciting ways, constantly blazing high-tech trails. In particular, Dartmouth College (NH), the University of Arkansas, the University of Evansville (IN), the College of Biblical Studies (TX), and Florida Atlantic University each have innovated with VoIP. Here are their stories.

Beam Me Up

Captain Picard of Star Trek fame would fit right in these days at Dartmouth College (NH), where nifty new VoIP-enabled wireless devices are all the rage. The devices, fresh off the production line at Vocera Communications (www.vocera.com), are modeled after the badge-like communication devices that Picard and his colleagues sported as they traveled the galaxy. The Vocera badges, however, are designed to be worn on a string around a user’s neck, and they use speech recognition software to allow for hands-free calling. Users just utter the name of the person they’re trying to reach and the device connects the call; no phone numbers are required. The badges send and receive voice traffic wirelessly, but do it over the Internet, essentially employing wireless VoIP.

Larry Levine, CIO and associate provost for Information Technology, describes the badges as “way cool,” and says they have taken off on the Hanover, New Hampshire campus. In a beta that began in October 2004, students can lease the phones from Dartmouth for $15 per month (they’d cost $300 apiece otherwise), and since anyone at Dartmouth is allowed to make and receive an unlimited number of local and long-distance calls, use of the badges, even to place calls, is free. What’s more, because the Vocera devices are tiny speakerphones, the quality of the voice transmission is quite good; my recent call to Levine’s own device actually sounded better than a call to the VoIP phone on his desk.

And for the cautious...

NOT EVERY COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY is rushing into VoIP. Take the University of San Francisco (CA). In 2004, when it was time for the school to replace its 15-year-old PBX, IT officials decided against the latest IP-based equipment, opting for a new $12.5 million system that lets the institution transform slowly from traditional voice systems to VoIP. The new system is comprised of two solutions from NEC (www.nec.com) that support digital voice transmission and IP communications simultaneously, as well as a number of new routers and access switches from Cisco. Specifically, these products are a NEAX 2400 IPX communications system, and a NEAXMail AD-120 messaging system.



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