The Customer
Fourteen IP is the world’s leading provider of cloud telephony services for hotels, connecting more than 100 000 rooms to its fully managed hotel management platform, Evolution Voice. Operating from the UK, Europe and North America, Fourteen IP serves independent hotels as well as the most prestigious hotel chains, such as Marriott, Hilton, Four Seasons, IHG, and many others.
Fourteen IP is the world’s leading provider of cloud telephony services for hotels, connecting more than 100 000 rooms to its fully managed hotel management platform, Evolution Voice. Operating from the UK, Europe and North America, Fourteen IP serves independent hotels as well as the most prestigious hotel chains, such as Marriott, Hilton, Four Seasons, IHG, and many others.
Business Challenges
The global hotel industry has thousands of on-site telephone systems (or PBXs), aged 10 to 25 years, that are in desperate need of a modern upgrade. Replacement of these systems has been delayed because, historically, new solutions did not offer additional features or benefits compared with the old equipment already deployed. Revenue generated by guest calls through property telephones is declining as cellular phones become more prevalent. A new telephone solution must therefore be cost-effective while offering clear benefits to properties and owners. Fourteen IP’s Evolution Voice solution meets these requirements by eliminating the on-site telephone system and connecting all hotel phones to Evolution Voice telephone services over the Internet.
The challenge is that almost all of these hotels, still using old systems, also have analog phones in guest rooms, back-of-house areas, meeting rooms and elevators. Ensuring that these devices remain operational and can coexist with Evolution Voice is an essential part of their offering. Neil Tolley, Managing Director of Fourteen IP, says: “98 % of hotels have analog phones they have invested in and do not wish to replace. Ensuring these devices are compatible with a reliable, cost-effective and easy-to-manage gateway is a major part of our solution and of Evolution Voice’s success”.
Sangoma offers a range of high-density VoIP gateways, the Vega 3000G series, which seamlessly connects analog devices to IP infrastructures. Available in 24- and 50-port variants (Vega 3000G and Vega 3050G, respectively), they support up to 24/50 analog phones and distances of up to 12 km from the gateway, ideal for hotels that can install them in their IT closets without worrying about line length. They are also the most resilient VoIP gateways in their class, so if the IP connection to the gateway goes down, analog phones can still communicate with each other and, most importantly, make emergency calls over a PSTN connection.
These gateways were the ideal choice for Fourteen IP because they offer tight integration with BroadWorks, the platform they use to provide Evolution Voice. In a typical hotel environment with analog phones, Fourteen IP deploys many Vega 3000G / Vega 3050G units at the edge of the network. All analog phones connect to the gateway, which then connects to Evolution Voice via the hotel’s existing Internet connection. With this setup, Fourteen IP delivers all its features to hotel users while ensuring their support and services, including those for the Vega gateways.
Solutions From Sangoma
To meet this challenge, Fourteen IP turned to Sangoma Technologies, a company with a long and successful track record of providing products that ensure seamless connectivity between legacy infrastructure and VoIP across many sectors, including hospitality.
To meet this challenge, Fourteen IP turned to Sangoma Technologies, a company with a long and successful track record of providing products that ensure seamless connectivity between legacy infrastructure and VoIP across many sectors, including hospitality.
The Results
Fourteen IP has achieved great success deploying Sangoma’s Vega VoIP gateways as part of its converged communications solutions, which are now standard equipment in its offering. Neil Tolley explains: “Our engineers are very pleased with how easy these gateways are to configure with our BroadWorks platform. They also appreciate the disaster recovery features of these units, which add great value to the services they provide. As Neil explains, ‘If the Internet connection between the Vega gateways and our hosted platform goes down, for whatever reason, all the hotel’s phones can still communicate and even make outgoing calls to the local telephone network.’ Fourteen IP continues to strengthen its relationship with Sangoma, having started deploying hundreds of Sangoma Vega 100/200 digital VoIP gateways as part of its other SIP trunking solution.
Fourteen IP has achieved great success deploying Sangoma’s Vega VoIP gateways as part of its converged communications solutions, which are now standard equipment in its offering. Neil Tolley explains: “Our engineers are very pleased with how easy these gateways are to configure with our BroadWorks platform. They also appreciate the disaster recovery features of these units, which add great value to the services they provide. As Neil explains, ‘If the Internet connection between the Vega gateways and our hosted platform goes down, for whatever reason, all the hotel’s phones can still communicate and even make outgoing calls to the local telephone network.’ Fourteen IP continues to strengthen its relationship with Sangoma, having started deploying hundreds of Sangoma Vega 100/200 digital VoIP gateways as part of its other SIP trunking solution.