Cardiff schools turn PSTN switch-off into opportunity for improved agility

Since 2019, the UK’s incumbent telco, BT, has been in preparation for the withdrawal of services based on legacy copper-based public switch telephone network (PSTN) and integrated services digital network (ISDN) offerings, and while many have seen this as a threat, Cardiff Council is regarding the PSTN switch-off as creating an opportunity to rethink school communications, while improving cost efficiency, business continuity and agility for staff.

Specifically, Cardiff Council has embarked on what it calls a digital transformation of its schools’ communications systems with an investment in Avaya Cloud Office by Ring Central, to provide an agile way to work and give teachers and staff the ability to be contactable on one number wherever they are in the school building or elsewhere.

“We not only needed to transition all the schools ahead of the PSTN switch-off deadline, but we had an opportunity to choose a communications system that would enable economies of scale and a robust business continuity solution if stay-at-home rules were ever put in place again,” said Huw David, operational manager for ICT Services at the council.

“Our schools’ phone systems had grown organically over many years,” he said. “They all had different arrangements with their own negotiated contracts, and we were dealing with differing types of handsets and technologies.

“Everything was done repeatedly,” said David. “We did a survey and it looked like around £600,000 was being spent on telephony across Cardiff schools per year, but with Avaya Cloud Office, we were looking at potential savings in the region of £350,000, which for a public sector organisation, is money that could be diverted to spend in other much-needed areas.”

Just over 18 months into the transition, 2,500 users have been onboarded to Avaya Cloud Office, a cloud-based phone system enabling teams to communicate and collaborate from a single platform. The service provides an agile way to work, giving teachers and staff not only the flexibility to be contactable on one number, but also the option to manage their availability.

As a public sector organisation, Cardiff Council must comply with standard procurement processes, including the due diligence to evaluate several digital telephony products sets on the market. Avaya’s ecosystem partner, FourNet – a specialist in secure cloud, CX consulting and digital transformation in the public sector – helped the council’s education department find an appropriate solution. FourNet was already on the all-Wales public sector procurement framework, helping with the purchasing process.

With 72 out of 128 schools already complete in the migration, the council is ahead of its transition schedule, and teachers and staff are said to be gaining communications’ agility and business continuity. In addition, the council said it has gained significant cost efficiencies and economies of scale, as well as ease-of-use and analytics data for IT admins.

“The PSTN switch-off is a great opportunity to rethink the tools schools use for communication, and what could be possible if all the separate siloed pieces of technology worked together in an integrated and holistic way,” said Steve Joyner, vice-president for the UK and Ireland at Avaya. “Cardiff Council had the vision to recognise this, and its schools will be well positioned to take advantage of all the communication and collaboration benefits that a world-class cloud phone system has to offer for many years to come.”