Town answers call of the future
Internet replaces 'archaic' phones
The town of Milton has switched to Internet-based phone technology in Town Hall, joining Hingham as one of the first municipalities in the region to make the leap to a system on the cutting edge of communication technology.
The move was designed to eventually save money, but it also solves a more immediate problem: it had become increasingly difficult to find people who could repair what had become an archaic phone system, said town officials.
Milton Town Administrator David A. Colton said he expected savings of about $300 or $400 a month. The system cost about $40,000 to install.
''We had to get a new phone system because the old system was defunct," said Colton. ''It was old and archaic. . . . It was very expensive to call a service guy."
There is an added benefit for residents: The new system allows for quick changes so a town can, for example, set up a flu hot line ''in 20 minutes," said Steve Becker, Hingham's manager of information services. It couldn't be done before.
The system is called VoIP, or ''voice over Internet protocol." It uses the same underlying technology as the Internet.
With VoIP, the person making the call does not notice anything different. He or she gets the same dial tone and the phone generally looks the same, explained Michael E. Roberts, chairman of Milton's Technology Committee, which helped the town make the switch. But underneath the surface, the technology is very different from old phone lines. The caller's words are digitized and disassembled into packets of information that are sent whizzing across the Internet. At the other end, the packets are reassembled into speech.
Consumers and companies like it because it's cheaper. Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, a business analysis company, says by next year two-thirds of the world's 2,000 largest companies will be using VoIP. And IDC Corp., a Framingham-based research company, has projected that its use in the United States will grow from 3 million people this year to 27 million in 2009.
It's not clear how many municipalities have turned to the technology, although it does not appear to be many. In fact, some towns are still struggling with ancient phone systems. The town of Duxbury just added voice mail -- a technology that might have been classified as cutting edge in the 1970s.
''It made sense for us to get into the 19th century," joked Richard R. MacDonald, the acting town manager in Duxbury. Adding voice mail cost the town about $6,000.
''We're getting very modern," said Nancy M. Oates, the town clerk for the past 22 years.
Hingham converted to VoIP about three years ago and the new system has worked well, said Becker. Like Milton, the community replaced an aging, difficult-to-repair system of limited capabilities with a cutting-edge system that offers many options.
For example, a Milton Town Hall employee who is transferred to work in another department can simply unplug his phone, plug in at the other location, and be in business with his or her old phone number. That isn't possible with the analog phones.
Also, digital phones can be integrated with other digital technology, like video conferencing.
Technology specialists have been predicting VoIP would be ''the next big thing." Some officials have predicted that this year the amount of money spent by corporations on Internet telephony will exceed the amount spent on traditional office phone equipment.
A big advantage is its ease of use. Companies like how a person can simply unplug the phone in one office and plug it into another and have the network recognize them.
However, there are downsides, including computer viruses and worms that can infect phones.
Also, when Milton switched systems it had to switch phone numbers, which was inconvenient to residents. The change was unexpected, said Jonathan A. Brown, another member of the town's Technology Committee.
Keeping the same numbers was possible, but would have meant switching from the old to the new system very quickly, which was technically difficult because the transfer depended on a number of different companies. It was easier and safer to have new numbers ready to go when the old system was unplugged, he said.
Matt Carroll can be reached at mcarroll@globe.com. 