The National Coal Mining Museum is a former coal mine that, since its closure in 1985, has preserved the history and tradition of coal mining by safeguarding the industry’s rich heritage; creating fun and inspiring learning opportunities for people of all ages, backgrounds and abilities. Located near Wakefield, West Yorkshire, thousands of visitors each year descend 140 m underground to discover what life was like as a miner; meet the pit ponies and horses that once carried coal to the surface; and enjoy beautiful gardens, picnic areas and an adventure playground. The site also has several spaces and rooms available for private events and business meetings.
The National Coal Mining Museum is a former coal mine that, since its closure in 1985, has preserved the history and tradition of coal mining by safeguarding the industry’s rich heritage; creating fun and inspiring learning opportunities for people of all ages, backgrounds and abilities. Located near Wakefield, West Yorkshire, thousands of visitors each year descend 140 m underground to discover what life was like as a miner; meet the pit ponies and horses that once carried coal to the surface; and enjoy beautiful gardens, picnic areas and an adventure playground. The site also has several spaces and rooms available for private events and business meetings.
Business Challenges
There were no outages in autumn and winter, but frequent interruptions in spring and summer: the Museum knew its telephone system was strangely and frustratingly unreliable at certain times of the year, but did not know why. A few years ago, the system began failing randomly during the spring and summer months; staff could not make or receive calls, and internal communication became impossible. The outages were often brief but could sometimes last longer and require a BT engineer to intervene. Eventually, the instability was linked to the trees traversed by the system’s overhead cables, which caused service interruptions when in full leaf. The trees could not be felled because of their proximity to critical power lines.
The museum’s business model—welcoming school trips and families, with critical communication requirements for underground safety and in the lifts—required external and internal communications to be available at all times. When the phones stopped working a few days before a school trip, a quick solution was essential to ensure emergency cover. The existing telephony and maintenance provider, Time Communications—a long-standing Sangoma reseller partner—installed a Sangoma FreePBX VoIP solution and a few handsets as a backup. Once the immediate problems had been temporarily resolved, the museum’s management and administrators assessed their long-term needs. They knew that the UK PSTN switch-off in January 2027 would require a digital response, and understood that it was time to deepen their relationship with Time Communications and Sangoma and permanently modernise their communications.
Sangoma Solutions
Sangoma Gold Accredited Partner Time Communications worked closely with the National Coal Mining Museum to fully understand its reliability issues and help it navigate the imminent UK PSTN switch-off. Shortly after deploying the market-leading cloud-powered FreePBX solution as a transition solution, robust and reliable digital connectivity was guaranteed at all times of the year, regardless of the environmental conditions that had so greatly affected past performance.
Sangoma Gold Accredited Partner Time Communications worked closely with the National Coal Mining Museum to fully understand its reliability issues and help it navigate the imminent UK PSTN switch-off. Shortly after deploying the market-leading cloud-powered FreePBX solution as a transition solution, robust and reliable digital connectivity was guaranteed at all times of the year, regardless of the environmental conditions that had so greatly affected past performance.
With digitisation driven by the inevitable switch-off, the museum placed its full confidence in the Sangoma/Time Communications partnership and, working closely together, all parties designed, delivered and adopted a modern, intelligent and future-proof system. Comprising a Sangoma cloud-based FreePBX; a mix of 55 award-winning Sangoma P310 and P325 handsets; and a top-of-the-range Sangoma P320 reception console with a larger screen, the new system was converted to digital using Sangoma SIP trunk technology. Ongoing support is provided locally by Time Communications, backed by Sangoma’s global scale, reputation and continued capacity for innovation.
Results
In addition, effective internal communication can be ensured 24/7, and the telephone alarms have been modernized. Brilliantly, from a service and support perspective, every component of the system is designed, built, and supplied by Sangoma, so if a problem arises, everything is covered and the museum’s service provider partner, Time Communications, has only one party to contact. Finally, and very importantly, the new system will allow the museum to save at least 20 % on its telephone bills in the future, with no more line rentals and significantly lower call charges.