Meet your K-12 voice communication needs

Funding, budget constraints and staffing challenges are top concerns of K-12 leaders, who are now forced to find more cost-effective solutions that meet their critical voice communications needs.

These leaders are also concerned with ensuring the safety of their school community. Establishing reliable voice service in every classroom and giving emergency responders an easy way to identify the origin of a 911 call are invaluable tools for safeguarding students and staff.

Whether a school or district wants to upgrade or maximize the value of an existing phone system, Spectrum Enterprise® can customize technology solutions to each K-12 institution’s unique needs. Whether you’re a public, charter or private school, we’ll help you create an infrastructure that supports and scales alongside your goals.

Voice services at a glance

From on-premises phone systems to cloud-based voice and collaboration solutions, K-12 schools and districts have many options for voice services. Education IT leaders seeking the most economical option often choose a trunking solution to maximize the value of existing onsite equipment.

Trunking allows a group of phones connected to the school’s private branch exchange (PBX) to dynamically allocate incoming and outgoing calls to any available trunk. This approach eliminates the need for separate lines for each user.

Spectrum Enterprise supports high-capacity session initiation protocol (SIP) and primary rate interface (PRI) voice services. We seamlessly support your changing communication needs and scale your voice solution as your requirements evolve.

Optimize your trunking solution for cost savings

One way school systems or districts can reduce costs is with a centralized
PBX model. With this approach to voice networking, IT leaders no longer have to maintain and manage multiple PBXs at various locations.

A centralized PBX requires phones to be connected over a wide area network and all public switched telephone network (PSTN) voice calling to be consolidated at a single location within the administration facility. This allows a school system or district to right-size the total number of trunks and to realize economies of scale.

The re-architecting of voice solutions can also help schools simplify voice solution management. With a centralized PBX trunking solution from Spectrum Enterprise, an IT manager at the district level goes from overseeing a distributed voice system with potentially many different vendors, levels of service, security features and pricing arrangements to a consolidated service with one provider. A single provider with one contract and one point of contact makes it easier to manage a voice solution.

Come as you are, we support you

Whether a school wants to continue to use its legacy equipment with PRI  or is interested in switching to SIP trunking, Spectrum Enterprise can help. Unlike some other vendors, we don’t require clients to move off of PRI trunking. Instead, clients can manage their voice system upgrades at their own pace and we’ll provide the technology and support that best fits the school and district strategy.
 

An additional way to save

Consolidating voice and data traffic onto a single IP network (either local or wide area) reduces equipment, cabling, installation and maintenance costs. It also allows phones to be moved more quickly and easily, reducing operational costs.

We are committed to offering reliable PRI and SIP trunking services for K-12 schools and districts—giving clients the ability to choose the right solution for their needs. Rest assured that our Enterprise Trunking solutions offer safety features designed for K-12 schools and districts, including:

E911 service with PS/ALI option¹: This feature gives emergency responders the precise location from which a 911 call originates—down to the exact building, floor and room number. While the standard E911 service automatically displays the telephone number and street address of the 911 caller on the emergency operator’s screen, E911 Location Plus allows users to specify detailed location information in schools and administration buildings. This could be critical in the event of an emergency when time is of the essence—a feature that could help save lives.

Failover capabilities: Multiple service options are available to guard against service disruptions and unusually heavy traffic. Options include automatic rerouting, equipment redundancy and full path diversity.

Spectrum Enterprise is dedicated to providing reliability and exceptional service. We manage voice services to the PSTN over our own private fiber network separate from the public Internet, ensuring a reliable, secure and high-quality voice solution. Because all Spectrum Enterprise trunking services are delivered over our dedicated, private fiber network, proactively monitored 24/7/365, you experience the same level of availability and performance, regardless of the trunking option you choose.

Our exceptional service-level agreement includes a 100% uptime guarantee from the public phone network all the way to the handoff at your PBX.

Additionally, view your Spectrum Enterprise services from one portal and access service locations, plans and usage details.

Some providers make schools purchase trunking services a la carte—bandwidth for the trunks, equipment, etc. Spectrum Enterprise provides a single, comprehensive, cost-effective, turnkey trunking solution. We provide and manage the equipment you need to connect to our fiber network. This packaged approach simplifies the procurement process, creating a better experience for you.

Our Enterprise Trunking service offers unlimited local calling and a range of options for outbound long-distance, outbound calling to popular international destinations and inbound toll-free calling.

Additional key product features include:

• Call Guard: Block or be alerted to unwanted spam, scam or robocalls throughout your organization; within specific locations; for select phone services; or for individual direct-inward-dial (DID) telephone numbers.
• IP PBX compatibility: SIP trunks are tested and certified for interoperability with leading IP PBX vendors. SIPconnect™ certification provides additional assurance of interoperability.
• Microsoft Teams Direct Routing: Organizations using Microsoft Teams for business calling can connect to the public telephone network via SIP trunk and a Microsoft-certified session border controller (SBC).
• Analog lines option: Connectivity is supported for business applications that require an analog interface including: fax machines, point-of-sale devices and key systems/PBXs.

Find alternative funding for your voice services

Spectrum Enterprise has teamed up with the Poly Grant Assistance Program to help K-12 leaders identify and secure alternative funding sources for their voice communications systems. We help schools through the entire grant process—from finding programs for which you might be eligible to guiding you through the submission of applications.

Learn more about this service by talking to a Spectrum Enterprise representative at 1-855-299-5707.

Digital education infrastructure that supports the needs of every student

As part of the overall IT plan, a cost-effective voice solution is essential and can help free up dollars to support other initiatives.

Enterprise Trunking from Spectrum Enterprise enables K-12 schools and districts to leverage their existing infrastructure, offers enhanced security features and can reduce the total cost of voice service over time.

We’re able to meet your ever-changing requirements by supporting your preferred trunk interface and handling either centralized or decentralized configurations. Our flexible service lets you scale as needed by adding more capacity, minutes of use (MOU) or other advanced features.

Learn how Spectrum Enterprise can fulfill your voice solution strategy needs.

¹Service name and functionality varies by region.