Baggies upgrade to IP telephony

Championship football club West Bromwich Albion, known as the Baggies, has chosen to improve its communications systems by upgrading to VoIP.

Lured by the promise of more flexible communications options and lower call and maintenance costs, West Brom employees will now be able to make calls around and between the club's two sites for free.

Installed by voice and data integrator Freedom, the system was praised by Phil Everitt, IT and special projects manager at WBA.

"Freedom has really understood the challenges our club faces, whether it is reducing costs, increasing efficiency of call handling or simplifying system management," he said.

Commenting on the installation, Freedom's head of marketing, Tom Perry, said VoIP provides a "total solution" for the club through simpler operations and improvements to efficiency.

This is most evident due to the benefits the system will provide West Brom when match tickets go on sale, as the system can be scaled up to cope with the greater numbers of incoming calls.