School district IT directors around the nation are being charged with the task of upgrading their institutions' telephony systems to VoIP to take advantage of its many benefits, including its cost-effective, scalable and flexible nature.

However, the economic downturn has forced virtually every school in the nation to limit their IT spending and put many projects on hold.

Rel Comm, a telecommunications systems provider serving more than 70 school districts throughout Western and Central New York, has helped schools overcome this hurdle by leveraging the power of Phybridge's (News - Alert) UniPhyer, dubbed the VoIP enabler.

The UniPhyer enables schools to use their existing cable infrastructure to create a robust IP Voice network. With the VoIP enabler, schools don't need to deploy time-consuming and costly on-premise VoIP equipment.

"If any of these districts had to re-cable for a VoIP solution and/or purchase new POE Switches and upgrade their data infrastructure, they would not have been able to fund these migration paths," Rel Comm officials noted in a recent partner highlight.

In addition, Phybridge products enable schools to keep their voice and data networks separate. With the influx of bandwidth-hungry video and distance learning applications, school IT directors much prefer to keep voice off their data network.

The working relationship with Rel Comm and Phybridge continues to grow. To date, Rel Comm has installed the VoIP enabler in eight school districts and two senior living facilities, with a half dozen other districts currently in the quoting process.

The New York-based company also says that three consultants are considering leveraging the Phybridge product to take advantage of next-gen voice services without the need for expensive deployments or traditional VoIP upgrades.

"It has been the difference between keeping our company employment steady and our bottom line profitable," Rel Comm officials added.

Beecher Tuttle is a TMCnet contributor. He has extensive experience writing and editing for print publications and online news websites. He has specialized in a variety of industries, including health care technology, politics and education. To read more of his articles, please visit his columnist page.

Edited by Stefania Viscusi