SUNY Buffalo Switches to VoIP

For a college campus like SUNY Buffalo, in western New York State the switch to VoIP will cost a mere $3 million. That puts them on same playing field as most enterprise size sales to companies.

The upgrade and switch will take place over a three year period. Last to get upgraded will be the dorm rooms.

The conversion will take place all throughout campus with the exception of in the dormitories. Deuell explained that this is because only a small percentage of students living in the dorms actually use the Centrex telephone service that is available to them. The results of surveying reflect that the majority of students stick to their cell phones rather than using the available in room telephone lines.

This statement speaks volumes to the need for dual mode devices and the need for a wireless campus environment. Universities like airports are seeing massive amounts of dollars leave their coffers due to the proliferation of cell phones. New models for WiFi phones, like what Earthlink is doing in their trials in Anaheim are aimed at directly recovering the lost revenue. So too is what Boingo, the hotspot aggregator, is up to. Both want the money to stay closer to home, and by deploying a WiFi cloud the university will be able to offer cell phone like service for peanuts, while still making money.

Comments

[Chris Holland]

yea i'm in no great rush to buy an iPhone, as my Sprint Treo 700P is serving my needs quite well for now, but as soon as it does WiFi and comes with a really good, *INTEGRATED* SIP client (or Apple releases an iPhone SDK and a 3rd-party builds one which i'll gladly PAY for), i'm *so* there.

Apple really could leverage its very strong brand as a device-maker to get people to think more in terms of buying a good device from a device maker, rather than from a phone network.

After all, Apple has a really really strong retail presence, perhaps stronger than any single phone manufacturer out there. That's a really big deal in my view. Because right now, most retail outlets for phones are generally operated by carriers ... so i'll buy my Treo 700P from a "Sprint Store" or a "Verizon (i really really really really HATE verizon) Store".