Tenor Connects Nortel-based VoIP Network with Legacy/Analog Devices in 150 Municipal Buildings

Seamless Integration of IP PBX With IP Phones, Non-IP Phones, Fax, Pagers, Intercoms and 911 Access

The Challenge

VoIP networks and IP phones can offer tremendous benefits to organizations with multiple locations and intensive communications needs. That’s why the St. Hyacinthe, Quebec school board, health care system and city government decided to take advantage of their newly built fiber network to create a robust VoIP environment. With a couple of Nortel Succession 1000s (IP PBX) and a variety of Nortel i2004, i2050 and i2002 IP phones, these three groups were ready to substantially reduce their recurring communications costs while gaining a wide range of new, valuable telephony capabilities.

The challenge faced by Telus National Systems, the contractor on the project, was that all these organizations had older phones, faxes, intercoms and paging systems that still needed to function in the new environment. There were apparently minor requirements (like the ability to perform hook-switch flash call transfers from cordless phones) that meant a lot to the individuals who had become accustomed to them. And there was the very significant issue of 911 alerting, which required use of analog lines for automatic identification of the originating location.

In other words, like many other organizations, St. Hyacinthe had a lot of smoothly functioning equipment that it was not about to replace – even as it underwent a total overhaul of its telephony environment to utilize internet telephony.

The VoIP Solution

Fortunately for St. Hyacinthe and Telus, Quintum’s Tenor MultiPath Gateways and Switches offered an ideal solution for integrating these legacy and analog communications resources into the new Nortel-based VoIP network. The Tenor switches interoperate seamlessly with the Succession 1000s, providing a perfect interface between analog equipment and the IP network that could be installed in each of the city’s 70-odd schools, municipal buildings, and healthcare facilities. Each location could then use all of its existing equipment for internet telephony without requiring any connectivity to the outside world other than its IP fiber link.

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