IP telephony and business VoIP are scheduled to play a vital part in linking up the various 2012 Olympics sites across London.
All of the 94 Olympics sites in the capital will each be provided with business VoIP handsets that will enable staff to communicate effectively using such methods as traditional voice calling and telephone conferencing. The Olympics system will in fact be supporting 16,500 such business VoIP handsets.
As with most other IP telephony (internet protocol telephony) and business VoIP (voice over internet protocol) services, the system designed for the Olympics sites will enable the organisers to instantly control the number of telephone extensions added or removed across the network.
The business VoIP service will also, in common with other IP telephony systems, enable users to transfer their extensions to different handsets across all of the sites; thus enabling ‘hot desking’ and the ability to make or receive a call via their usual extensions whilst away from their normal working areas.
Also, as with most business VoIP services, the Olympics system will enable supervisors to monitor usage of the phones by each staff member.
One advantage for the organisers of the Olympic system is that capital investment in the network had been kept to a minimum, given that the service is run by a remote hosted business VoIP provider.
Hosted VoIP is a service model growing in favour among many businesses across the UK and worldwide as it not only means lower infrastructure costs, as in the case of the London Olympics, but also guarantees round-the-clock technical assistance from the remote business VoIP provider or VoIP reseller.
The Olympics IP telephony system has already been trialled during live event testing which has been taking place across the sites since the end of May this year.
