Two weeks versus Two months to get up and running with Hosted PBX and T1 service

The Challenge
In June 2008, SEIU Local 199 had to move their Coralville, Iowa office to a new location due to summer flooding on the Iowa river. Their previous communications provider (Qwest) was unable to provide them a timely voice and Internet solution to keep communications and operations available at the new site. Qwest suggested DSL as an alternative solution for the short term, as it would take them up to two months to provision a T1 circuit with Voice-over-IP. The short-term solution was not acceptable to SEIU Local 199 because they did not want to purchase a new phone system and settle for the service level associated with a DSL connection. They did not want to make a major capital reinvestment on a system they had chosen to migrate away from.

The LightEdge Solution
SEIU Local 199 discovered that LightEdge was able to provide both the T1 connectivity and a Hosted PBX voice system that would allow the company to quickly get back to serving its members. Implementation for the project, from decision to complete implementation, was just two weeks.

“It’s absolutely tremendous what LightEdge was able to pull off,” said Jim Jacobson, Staff Director, SEIU. “We could have potentially recreated the environment with Qwest and went with DSL, but we would have had to purchase a phone system that we didn’t want, plus get it installed. It probably would have taken the same 2 week timeframe to get up and running as it had with LightEdge, but we would have been stuck with a non-scalable solution that was just not right for us moving forward. Moving to a Hosted PBX solution was something new and different for our organization, but ultimately we know it will be better for us.”

“It’s (Hosted PBX Voice-over-IP) basically a phone and data service like we’ve always had. We dial the phone like we normally would have. There’s nothing odd about it except that a data line connects to your phone which then connects to your PC. The voice quality is terrific and now our employees have their own phone numbers. Before, we had seven phone lines with a hunt system that we all shared. We’re much happier with this set-up and we’re thrilled with our decision to work with LightEdge.”