School district uses VoIP to talk to parents

A US district has used VoIP services to improve the way its schools communicate.

Minooka Grade School District in Illinois now has a dedicated voice mailbox which parents can access to find out the latest information, particularly on school closures, the Herald-News reports.

Families can call the number and get the latest updates from superintendent Al Gegenheimer as soon as he decides a school must close in the case of bad weather or an emergency, meaning three to four hours of contacting households individually can be saved.

On top of that, landlines have been replaced by VoIP phones in the district, leading to cost reductions and an improvement in bandwidth from 2 Mb to 100 Mb.

"We saved money on the phones so we could beef up our internet (and) connectivity between schools and schools to the internet is even greater," Gegenheimer said.

The announcement comes after Carolyn Dawson told TMCnet earlier this month that businesses can significantly reduce their telephony costs by switching to VoIP.