The telephone system currently being used by the city is so old that people have to trawl the Internet for replacement parts.
AGAWAM – The City Council has authorized spending $350,000 to buy a new telephone service for municipal offices as well as the School Department that is projected to save the city about $600 a month.
The $600 a month in savings comes to about 25 percent of the current cost of the city’s telephone system, Mike Ebner told the council during its meeting Tuesday. He is the city’s independent consultant from Concept Telecom of East Longmeadow.
The council ended up voting 9-0 to move ahead with a new system, with City Council President Donald M. Rheault recusing himself as he has worked with most of the telephone services in the area.
Ebner did a power point presentation before the council that highlighted some of the problems with the current telephone system, which was installed in 1992. He said the system is at capacity and needs work. It is so antiquated that repair people sometimes have to trawl the Internet to locate replacement parts. The city is poised to buy a new telephone system from the Connecticut company Total Communications.
When the telephone system is down, the city loses the capacity to use the 911 emergency system, he told the council. There have also been reports of constant busy signals on School Department telephones, according to Ebner.
Among the boons of the new telephone system will be being able to provide voice mail to School Department employees whether or not they have their own telephones, Ebner said.
It will also let the city add fax lines at no additional cost and protect the city from an extended system outage.
Ebner said it will take anywhere from four to eight weeks for equipment to arrive with it taking another three to four months to install the new system.
Among the other benefits of new system as outlined in Ebner’s power point presentation are the following:
• All telephone numbers will remain the same.
• Caller ID will be a standard feature.
• All employees will have their own 7-digit direct inward dial number to they can be reached without having to have a receptionist or auto attendant.
• Departments will have a box of telephones on standby in cases they need to evacuate and set up operations at another area.
• A voice mail system will allow a department head to record one message and broadcast it to an entire department.