Business Problem
Cityplay had provided IP-based fixed voice telephony services using a VOIP telephone switch for many years. The supplier of the equipment announced quite suddenly that it would declare the switch product as End Of Life and that support would be discontinued after 18 months. Cityplay was unwilling to use an unsupported telephone switch at the heart of it’s network and so the decision was taken to launch a project to evaluate, purchase and implement a new VOIP telephone switch.
Key Considerations
Some of the key considerations in selecting the new switch are shown below:
| Manageability | Quality of management and support interface. |
| Redundancy | Platform to have hardware and software redundancy to guard against failure and loss of service. Geographic redundancy to be a possibility. |
| Cost | |
| Future-proof | future IMS developments permitting evolution towards a multi-service offering using this platform. |
| Support | Quality of support; availability; release cycles |
| Stability of supplier | Financial soundness; commitment to long-term support |
| Service improvements | fax / alarm / credit-card reader; Problem resolution time. |
| Migration reliability | No loss of services during migration |
Project Scope
As Technical Director, Richard Caplin led the project from start to finish. This included building the business case for approval by shareholders in order to obtain initial approval to proceed with the project and regular project reviews.
The project divided into several clearly defined phases :
- Evaluation
- Selection & negotiation
- Installation
- Systems Integration
- Commissioning and acceptance
- Homologation
- CPE testing
- Migration of residential subscribers
- Migration of business subscribers
- Task Assignments
External consultants were employed to assist with creating the requirements document and Request for Proposals (RFP) and with initial evaluations. Shortlisting, final selection and negotiation were performed by Cityplay. Installation and initial setup was undertaken by the supplier. All other implementation phases of the project were undertaken by staff from the Cityplay assisted by the supplier
OutcomeDespite a number of challenges, such as
- temporary migration configuration had to be changed from that planned
- the CPE certification was more difficult than expected
- the automated provisioning system taking longer than expected to develop
the switch was put into production with no loss of service to any subscribers and with the result that the desired service improvements were achieved.
