The background

South West Communications Group helps South West Highways link its Devon-based 10 satellite sites and a team of home workers to create an efficient and cost-effective centralised IP telephone network solution.

South West Highways (SWH) is based near Exeter, Devon, and employs more than 650 staff across its 5 divisions providing solutions for both public and private sector businesses. SWH is a leading provider of highway maintenance and civil engineering construction throughout the South West. It is also the largest commercial maintenance provider in the region and is emerging in the building construction arena.

The challenge

SWH is split across 10 satellite sites comprising regional offices and workshops situated in remote locations across Devon together with a team of home workers also scattered across the region. All sites operated on stand-alone telephone systems and networks, which were both costly and inefficient and a centralised system was clearly required.

SWH’s broadband network was struggling to cope with increased levels of data traffic not only within its head office, where its administration, design and sales departments and NVQ training facility are based, but also between its other sites.

This problem was compounded by the rural, isolated areas in which SWH’s offices and workshops were based where broadband provision and speeds were weak. In particular, SWH’s head office is situated in a remote disused quarry in Rockbeare between Honiton and Exeter. The connectivity issues created by a geographically dispersed business like SWH meant interaction with head office and between sites was very limited; an unacceptable and costly position for SWH.

The solution

South West Communications Group was awarded the contract to provide an Alcatel-Lucent OmniPCX Enterprise IP telephone system and access to its Exeter data centre to link all of SWH’s 10 sites with a robust voice and data wide area network (WAN) that took advantage of point to point microwave technology in a single solution which included the following:

• Multi-site telephone system for 350 users
• Centralised operators
• Remote working
• Voicemail/email integration
• Centralised management & reporting
• Line rental and calls
• GSM mobile gateway
• Resilient and secure WAN
• Cost-effective point to point microwave link
• Centralised IT resources
• Telephone system duplication for resilience
• Ongoing support and account management

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