A number of Queensland schools within the state's Department of Education and Training (DETA) have started trialling IP telephony solutions, networking vendor 3Com revealed yesterday.
Peter Chai, vice president and general manager of 3Com, Asia Pacific. (Credit: 3Com)
"They are in an initial period of trying IP telephony for Queensland schools, especially the new schools," said Peter Chai, vice president and general manager of 3Com's Asia-Pacific division. "In principal there are intentions to have more of a converged type network [to create] cost saving and more efficient uses of the bandwidth."
The news came as 3Com revealed it had won a large contract with DETA for the supply of WLAN, LAN and IP telephony equipment. Chai said that the contract was a continuation from an early arrangement where 3Com equipment was sold to DETA through the reseller CDM.
The new direct contract between DETA and 3Com is five years in length, with the possibility of year-by-year extensions for another three years. Chai declined to reveal the value of the contract, saying only that it was in the multiple millions.
The contract covers supplies of enterprise-grade service routers, modular core switches, stackable switches and 802.11n-based wireless access points. It will also include IP telephony platforms for some schools and networking equipment for administrative offices.
"What they do in terms of the roll-out, is they would normally do a quarter to a third of their schools every year," Chai said. "They have a total of about 1,400 schools."
Chai said the new contract was a result of an increased demand for bandwidth in schools, along with an increasing number of schools rolling out wireless networks.
"There is a constant refreshing of the network, and a [need] for faster and faster speeds," Chai said. "Also in the last year they have also deployed a lot of wireless access."
Chai said that the current state of IT in Queensland schools meant that regional students could expect a wireless speed of roughly 2Mbps, while Brisbane-based students could expect a "multi-megabit" connection.
"In principal ..." very droll!