Municipal Government Unifies Telephone System

The City of Chelsea improved functionality and reliability and cuts its costs with Cisco Unified Communications and CBE Technologies.

Business Challenge

The City of Chelsea is a small city bordering Boston, Massachusetts, and within its 1.8 square miles lives a diverse population of 35,100 citizens. The City provides general governmental services, including police and fire protection, trash collection and disposal, public education (pre-kindergarten through grade twelve), water and sewer services, parks and recreation, health and social services, libraries/culture, and maintenance of streets and highways.

Like many local governments, the City of Chelsea added to existing phone systems and purchased new ones over the years as needed. This led to a decentralized phone environment of disparate systems, expensive leased Centrex lines, and increasingly unstable phone service. During the academic year of 2006, the situation grew so dire that on a few occasions phone calls could not get into or out of Chelsea High School.

Concerned that the city’s schools and agencies were at risk with unreliable phone service, Matt Killen, then CIO of the City of Chelsea, was committed to improving phone communications for all of the city’s services “We approached our phone system problems as a citywide issue in need of a comprehensive solution,” says Killen. “All of the city locations, including our nine schools, needed reliable, unified service.” In addition, Killen was hoping that a new solution would help the City eliminate its investments in maintenance contracts that charged premium fees for the most basic services such as moves, adds, and changes.

Killen and his IT staff had contracted with Cisco Premier Certified Partner CBE Technologies, located in Boston, on prior networking projects for City of Chelsea, and Killen turned to them again for assistance in realizing his communications vision for the City of Chelsea.

CBE Technologies is uniquely suited to recommending and deploying technology solutions for Chelsea. It has developed a focused business on the integration and support services needs of both local government and K–12 education. And having worked on prior City projects, the CBE team was familiar with the City’s operations and the network infrastructure, and knew that they communicated and worked well with the City’s IT staff.

Network Solution

In 2005, Chelsea had standardized on a Cisco network infrastructure to provide a foundation for the addition of future capabilities, such as voice over IP (VoIP). Its Cisco infrastructure includes a Cisco Catalyst® 6500 Core Switch, Cisco 3500 series switches, and Cisco 4500 series chasses at the network edge to provide for video delivery, VoIP, and other applications possible for the future. The Cisco solution includes security firewalls, intrusion detection, and security agents on the servers.

"Matt is a keen technologist,” says Sean Kelley, vice president of telecommunication for CBE Technologies. “His communications initiative for Chelsea was very solid. It would be a long process in terms of finalizing a design and finding funding, and we were determined to stay with him every step of the way.”

CBE recommended a Cisco Unified Communications solution that included Cisco Unified Communications Manager, nearly 800 Cisco Unified IP Phones, mostly the 7941G model, and Cisco Unity voicemail. An XML application from Berbee called InformaCast would be deployed on Cisco Unified Communications Manager to provide a unified paging system via the Cisco Unified IP Phones across all City departments and all of the schools.

Part of the project funding was through the federal government’s E-rate program, which helps public schools and libraries get affordable telecommunications and Internet services through subsidized discounts.

“CBE’s strength in upfront planning and program management played a key role in the project’s overall success.” says Jeff Mann, account manager at CBE. “Major complexities of the project included the number of sites, the mix of city services and schools, and the emphasis on emergency services. That made the dial plan very granular and demanded proper planning. With about 15 locations to be implemented, including the city’s nine schools, which are housed in six buildings, CBE scheduled a phased deployment.

“We started the deployment at smaller sites with fewer phones so that we could address any issues that came up before we rolled out to the more critical facilities such as schools and the police station,” says Mann. A diverse group of City employees was assembled as a pilot group for training. They were provided with Cisco Unified IP Phones before the initial deployment process, and the teams worked with them to design an effective training program.

“Some people were a bit intimidated by the phones at first, but that was soon overcome when they saw all the features and functions of the new system,” says Killen. They were really excited to have phones that were so functional and that would help them be productive. The Cisco Unified IP Phones are very intuitive, and people found them very easy to use.”

Business Results

With the City of Chelsea now up and running with its new Cisco Unified Communications solution, Killen is excited to see how his communications vision is affecting daily life for the City’s workers and its citizens.

“For our clients, the main benefit is that all of the equipment works!” says Killen. “Everyone has access to voicemail, call forwarding, and conferencing and can easily transfer calls. We came from a jumble of systems that were old and limited in their functionality. The telephone is a key business tool, and we could not use it that way. The unified dial plan substantially unifies communications, helping employees be more productive and effective.” Simple things, such as directories, have made a big impact. Phone lists used to be compiled, typed up, printed out on paper, and distributed, and then were quickly out of date. Now each staff member can access a current, common directory, right from the screen of his or her Cisco Unified IP Phone. In addition to the productivity gains, the City of Chelsea is expecting to save hundreds of thousands of dollars over five years in telecommunications costs.

Next Steps

With an infrastructure that will support exciting new applications and capabilities, the City’s IT staff is already looking ahead. The basic audio conferencing capabilities through Cisco Unified Communications are so effective that a more comprehensive Cisco Unified MeetingPlace solution is being considered for unified voice, video and Web conferencing. The IT staff is also considering adding video conferencing capabilities for staff development and training by the City’s public safety departments, and for the City’s school teachers to take advantage of distance learning program.

“This has been a very exciting project for us,” says Killen. “It is very clear that this purchase was sound fiscal policy and technology working together for the benefit of the City and for its citizens.”