Three’s 3Connect fully hosted phone system sets the standard

Louth Meath Education and Training Board (LMETB) conducted a tender process to migrate a number of sites in its network to internet telephony and chose Three’s 3Connect fully hosted phone system. “New LMETB facilities will get 3Connect and they will also replace existing systems with it over time,” says Three head of ICT, Karl McDermott.

Louth Meath is one of Ireland’s largest education and training boards supporting more than 50,000 learners across 18 secondary schools, two post-Leaving Cert colleges, four community national schools, as well as a range of further education and training centres, youth-reach centres and adult services facilities throughout the two counties.

“Connectivity is a key part of LMETB’s delivery strategy,” McDermott explains. “The board wanted to ensure it had the right technology infrastructure in place that would allow for its continued expansion, and to continue to meet the needs of education, training and administration where advances in technology were starting to play an increasingly significant role. More and more people now use mobile devices and social media, and the board had identified the need for blended and online learning even before the Covid-19 pandemic.”

One of LMETB’s latest initiatives is a new Advanced Manufacturing Training Centre of Excellence located in the Xerox Technology Park in Dundalk. The centre is focused on becoming the leading provider in the country for high-quality training in advanced manufacturing and industry 4.0 related technologies and processes.

Until recently, many of the different buildings within the LMETB network were running PABX technology for their phones, using old copper-based fixed phone lines. Some of these systems were reaching the end of their useful working life, and the infrastructure could not support the board’s ambitious plans. The 3Connect platform will address those issues.

“Where 3Connect comes into its own is that it’s an internet-based system that can spread seamlessly across buildings,” says McDermott. “Because it’s hosted in the cloud you can replace any number of disparate systems with a single system which is much easier to manage. This cuts back on costs as it requires less people to run it. You don’t need PTSN phone lines for the system and that eliminates line rental, further cutting down on costs. Also, because it’s a pay as you go service there are no major upfront costs. That’s another big benefit.”

3Connect is designed to be user friendly, McDermott points out. It is controlled by a web portal that lets the customer set up features like call forwarding, receiving, and transferring calls and voicemails, so there’s no interruption while schools are in session. Depending on the level of technical resources in each school, they can have a member of staff manage the call settings themselves or email a request to Three’s support desk in Limerick. The don’t need a PABX engineer to come out and do it. That also saves on professional services fees, because this feature comes at no extra cost, regardless of whether the customer chooses to self-serve or work with the support desk.

One of the 3Connect features that proved hugely popular with schools are soft clients, which mean staff can make or take calls over the internet from their computers or mobile devices.

“That was very useful during the lockdowns,” he adds. “Staff could move their work numbers to their mobiles making it very easy to work from home. You can have the number on both your mobile and desk phones if you wish. Another great feature which comes built in is voice conferencing. We will also be adding Microsoft Teams integration in the near future.”

School activities

LMETB also implemented a simple and convenient online payments platform, Way2Pay from Three. The system lets parents and guardians pay for school activities like field trips or sports activities from their mobiles.

3Connect’s flexibility has also proved very useful for the new Advanced Manufacturing Training Centre of Excellence which launched its initial training offering online last month with classes expected to run on site later in the year.

“The system makes it easy to set up collaborative pods for students that might need to work together for a short period of time on a project,” McDermott points out. “It also supports hot desking so whatever desk you sit at on any given day, you just log into the phone and it becomes your number with all your speed dials and other system preferences.”

The other advantage of the system is that you don’t need to worry about software upgrades or security updates. “Because it’s hosted in the cloud, all upgrades to the core 3Connect system are available to every user immediately.”