The Customer

According to the Times Higher Education ranking of emerging universities, published in 2017, London Metropolitan University is among the UK’s leading institutions. The institution offers numerous services to support students, staff, local communities, and businesses. Its aim is to connect students with opportunities to strengthen their professional skills. Businesses benefit from a range of services, including student matchmaking, support, and venue hire for events. From a bespoke newsroom to a state-of-the-art super lab, London Metropolitan University aims to create a stimulating and unique learning environment.

According to the Times Higher Education ranking of emerging universities, published in 2017, London Metropolitan University is among the UK’s leading institutions. The institution offers numerous services to support students, staff, local communities, and businesses. Its aim is to connect students with opportunities to strengthen their professional skills. Businesses benefit from a range of services, including student matchmaking, support, and venue hire for events. From a bespoke newsroom to a state-of-the-art super lab, London Metropolitan University aims to create a stimulating and unique learning environment.

Business Challenges

For a university bustling with thousands of students, faculty, and support staff, maintaining smooth communication is crucial. Traditionally, the university’s communications relied on the Siemens iSDX platform. As the institution grew, the need for a new communications system increased. In 2017, the technical department had to deploy about 150 phones in an area where dedicated (traditional) voice cabling to the Siemens system was unavailable. The phones could not be configured without an alternative PBX. The technical team was looking for a fast solution to complete this deployment.

The main challenges were:

  • Time sensitivity: deploying a working phone system with 150 phones was urgent.
  • Flexibility: they needed a reputable, reliable, high-quality PBX to connect the new phones to the existing network.
  • Cost: finding the best solution as quickly as possible while staying within budget.
  • Efficiency: the team had to choose a solution that increased the overall efficiency of the telecommunications network and reduced long-term costs.

Louis Guadagno, the technology infrastructure manager at London Metropolitan University, had extensive experience with Asterisk-based systems and knew the benefits of Sangoma FreePBX. He had also used Sangoma Vega gateways and was impressed by their robustness.

Solutions From Sangoma

The client deployed a Sangoma FreePBX Phone System 300 to connect its 150 phones. The FreePBX Phone System 300 supports up to 300 extensions and 120 concurrent calls. The system came with a preinstalled FreePBX distribution, powerful hardware features, and a comprehensive warranty. Ready to use, it included a range of FREE features: queues, IVR, conference bridge, fax to email, ring groups, music on hold, voicemail broadcasting, wake-up calls, announcements, etc., essential for a university telephone network. It also offered standard calling features at no extra cost: three-way calling, caller ID, recording, do not disturb, history, blacklist, filtering, etc.

The Vega 3050G is a 50-port high-density analog gateway from Sangoma, enabling a large number of analog phones and devices to connect to an IP network, typically to an ITSP or a corporate network. In the case of London Metropolitan University, this made it possible to seamlessly integrate the 150 analog phones with an IP core, eliminating the cost of rewiring to migrate to IP phones. A Sangoma A102D PRI card was installed to connect the legacy PBX to FreePBX 300, which was then connected to a SIP trunk. The A102D card is a 2-port E1/T1 voice and data card that supports up to 60 voice calls or 4,096 Mbps of bidirectional throughput over two T1, E1, or J1 lines. It was used to create a SIP‑TDM gateway with the legacy Siemens PBX, replacing the costly PRI connection with SIP trunking, thereby reducing call costs and line rental while providing greater flexibility and disaster recovery.

The Results

The Sangoma solution enabled the team to implement the system in record time and within budget. It provided the required solution while minimizing disruption.

The Sangoma solution enabled the team to implement the system in record time and within budget. It provided the required solution while minimizing disruption.

Benefits of using Sangoma FreePBX 300 Phone System in this setup:

  • High flexibility, enabling connection of the 150 phones that could not be connected to the legacy PBX due to a lack of infrastructure
  • Ease of deployment. The urgent need was for rapid deployment, and FreePBX delivered exactly that
  • Ease of administration. Sangoma FreePBX is one of the easiest PBXs in the world to manage and administer
  • Superior performance. The FreePBX system improved the communications system through its advanced features

Benefits of using Sangoma Vega 3050G in this setup:

  • Interoperability between 150 analog phones and a modern VoIP PBX
  • Flexible routing for failover and least-cost routing
  • Provision of local survivability (backup against unexpected PBX failures)

Benefits of using Sangoma A102 card in this setup:

  • Stable calls with 100 % uptime
  • Integration between a legacy PBX and a modern VoIP PBX
  • Substantial savings through connection to a SIP trunk. Monthly SIP trunk fees are much lower than those for a traditional PSTN line
  • Opportunity to leverage the legacy PBX infrastructure while implementing a modern VoIP telephone system and reducing operating costs.