News & Events
Talk is cheap
- 12/09/2018
- Posted by: pembscollegesuperadmin
College expertise called on at national conference
With a reduction in annual call costs of 55 percent, Pembrokeshire College is leading the field in the adoption of the Joint Academic Network (JANET) telephony purchasing service.
Moving its telephone system, to utilise its broadband network connection, during the autumn of 2013, the College became the first educational institution in the UK to adopt the cost-saving service.
As a result of the huge success of the JANET system, Matt Marl, IT Manager at Pembrokeshire College, was called on to present to heads of IT departments from colleges and universities across the UK at the annual Converged Network and Telephony Services conference held in Sheffield in January.
The conference explored how converging network and telephony has the potential to offer a number of business benefits leading to increased productivity, collaboration and cost reduction. Taking advantage of Voice over Internet Protocol (VOIP) over the JANET network allows academic institutions to save using the benefits of scale. This UK wide framework allows rental and cost per call rates to be significantly reduced without impacting reliability.
Matt commented: “Switching to the JANET system was a straightforward transition which has resulted in our annual call costs falling from almost £12,000 per annum to around £5,500 per annum. This is a huge saving and we are now looking at extending the system to allow calls between College mobiles and College landlines to go through the same system which will result in further savings.
“Being the first college or university in the UK to adopt the system demonstrates Pembrokeshire College’s commitment to being at the cutting edge of developments in network and telephony services.”
On the back of this talk, Matt has now been invited to present at the three-day NetWorkshop 42 conference to be held April.