According to CNN:Nortel Government Solutions, a U.S. company wholly owned by Nortel completed the core network for the massive new U.S. Social Security Administration (SSA) VoIP system within 180 days of initial purchase orders, an aggressive requirement of the 10-year, US $300 million Telephone Systems Replacement Project (TSRP) award.
Now I'm all for Social Security upgrading their phone systems and going VoIP, but $300 million? $300 million? That's just crazy talk. What's in this Nortel phone system - titanium? platinum? Surely, there must be a cheaper, perhaps open source solution that can save the Social Security program millions, which means saving me, the U.S. taxpayer millions.
Ok, so I read further...
Ok, now that is one massive integrated VoIP phone system. It definitely has to handle quite a bit of call volume, lots of phone endpoints (100,000+), security, management, etc. Government institutions have to be especially wary of security and privacy implications, so Nortel probably offers special professional services to ensure security and high availability. I still keep tripping over the $300 million though, which is part of the Telephone Systems Replacement Project (TSRP). Doesn't this sound eerily similar to TARP (Trouble Assets Relief program), the massive U.S. government bailout program? Only 1 letter off.The new system, expected to become one of the largest enterprise VoIP deployments in the world, is already supporting more than 125 offices and more than 33,500 calls daily. To date, the new system has handled over 1.6 million calls. With 12-16 offices added each week, approximately 500 offices will be added per year until all 1,526 offices are online. Nortel Government Solutions has engineered the system to support over 100,000 phones.
Social security is going bankrupt and they're spending hundreds of millions on a newfandagled phone system made by a Canadian and not by an American company. Makes perfect sense to me. American taxpayers may as well bailout Nortel, Canada's pride and joy telecom company.
Just kidding folks. The SSA should choose the best phone system at the best price. Obviously, Nortel won the contract fair and square. Unless of course they greased some palms at the SSA. When it comes to the government and politics, I am always a bit wary.
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Actually the system is pretty sophisticated - way more than a freebie Skype-type setup, which is what you seem to expect. It includes soft switch and call center functionality that route and track calls based on which operators are logged in at that moment in any of the 1,526 Social Security offices in the network and what questions they are qualified to answer (i.e. get each call to the next available person who can answer it as quickly as possible).
This is the government finally doing something ahead of the crunch with regard to the swelling boomer retirement bubble. Using this system will dramatically reduce hold times and redirects while dramatically increasing the likelihood that callers get their questions answered and their problems dealt with in less time. And time is money...
When we're talking millions of people making millions of calls requiring millions of government staff-hours to handle (not including the time taxpayers spend on hold), a low-cost phone system with best-in-class call center features will save us all billions of dollars over the years. Which means even a $300 million upfront investment makes a lot of sense (especially at a time when we're throwing billions at banks with nothing to show for it)...
>>way more than a freebie Skype-type setup, which is what you seem to expect.
I said open source, not 'freebie'. Open source doesn't necessarily mean free and Skype certainly isn't open source. I was hinting at Asterisk, the open source IP-PBX as a more cost-effective solution for the SSA.
>>This is the government finally doing something ahead of the crunch with regard to the swelling boomer retirement bubble.
I'm all for it, just as long as they're not overspending. The gov't is notorious for overspending on things.
Skype would not be a competitor for a solution of this scale/featureset. Possible alternatives for consideration are:
- Nortel
- Avaya
- Cisco
- Asterisk in a distributed custom deployment
My career has been focused on VoIP since before Avaya split off from Lucent and before Cisco acquired Selsius and entered the IP PBX market in 1998.
I tried to give Nortel a chance in the past... I went to their roadshows trying to acquire more technical info re: their VoIP solutions, and it was complete marketing fluff without an ounce of direction for how to learn the meat of what they support. Later, I evaluated their products versus Avaya and Cisco, and we dropped Nortel early because their systems were so fragile that they crashed when we did SNMP (network management) queries.
Given how far behind they are technically, and their very questionable financial state, I have a hard time believing the decision was made based on technical merits and cost effectiveness.
Sorry - I didn't mean Skype per se, just its peer-to-peer implementation as opposed to an actual network.
An open source IP-PBX would be great in terms of providing simple phone service (i.e. host a certain number of lines), but does not allow for the multi-site configuration the SS Admin needs, nor does it provide call center functions across all those sites.
Here's another snippet from that CNN article, showing there's a lot more involved than just an IP-PBX:
The new SSA VoIP network features Nortel's Communication Server 1000 switching, Contact Center Management Server, Media Processing Server 500 IVR, unified messaging solution with Unified Messaging 2000 core platform and CallPilot(1), and IP Phone 1100 Series handsets.
http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/marketwire/0470468.htm
Nortel is a company that has offices in many countries - It is true that it is a Canadian company in that it was founded in Canada and the company HQ is in Toronto. However, if you think that all money spent on Nortel products/services goes to Canada you are mistaken. Furthermore, there are more US citizens employed and very well paid by Nortel than Canadian citizens - Pay that ultimately gets spent within the US economy. To make a statement implying that you might as well bail them out is foolish by any measure.
>>To make a statement implying that you might as well bail them out is foolish by any measure.
Relax Nortel Guy. I was being tongue-in-cheek with the whole bailout thing since that topic is a hot one. Besides, I'm not a protectionist that believes in buying U.S.-only. And I'm well-aware that Nortel has U.S. subsidiaries and hires U.S. employees.
I guess sometimes my sarcasm doesn't come through or only I find myself funny!
Nortel Voip is no longer weak. Before release 5 I would have given you that. Now its a great product, having worked Federal Govermnet telcom projcts for over 10 years including SSA I can tell you its a good fit for them.
I wouldnt ever think of proposing something open source. Nothing wrong with it there just isnt a nation wide network of Astrisk techs on the same page to maintain something like that.
I'm a low level part of this and I can assure you that the government is not overspending, they are getting their moneys worth! Nortel has sub contracted alot of the work to american companies. These are guys in the field installing the phones, running the cables, and just trying to put food on the table. Nortel Government Solutions is taking care of the programming and design, which is doing great so far. With any project this size there have been speedbumps in the road but Nortel is getting it done and I am proud to be a part of it.
While 300 Mil sounds like alot, the program will save them money over time on long distance calls alone. TO say they are "blowing" the money just shows how inept and unqualified you are to even be talking about this!