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County reviews proposal to replace aging phone system; staff to audit telecom bills
Summary
County IT and finance staff outlined a proposal to replace a 20-year-old on-premises phone system with a cloud subscription, with estimated gross vendor cost of about $6,125 per month (roughly $73,500 per year) and potential net increases after current savings; staff were directed to get detailed Allo invoices and vendor comparisons.
County information-technology staff and vendors presented commissioners with options to replace a county phone system the county described as roughly 20 years old, and proposed moving to a cloud-hosted, subscription model.
An IT representative (identified in the meeting as a vendor contact) said the county’s likely subscription cost based on current vendor quotes was about $6,125 per month, or roughly $73,500 per year. The presenter told commissioners that switching to a cloud-hosted voice-over-Internet (VoIP) model would eliminate recurring costs the county currently pays for PRI lines and a support contract, which the presenter estimated at about $10,000 per year for support plus roughly $9,600 per year for PRI lines, producing roughly $20,000 in current savings. The net new subscription cost after those savings was described in the meeting as roughly $53,500 per year under the higher-end vendor quotes the presenter used for budgeting.
Staff and commissioners questioned how much of the county’s existing phones could be reused, whether some departments could use “soft” (software) phones on laptops or cell devices instead of desk phones, and whether Allo or other existing vendors were billing the county correctly. The vendor said a typical implementation would bill per-user licenses, and the county’s current active user count in the present ShoreTel system was described as “about 250.” The vendor said many suppliers now prefer subscription/cloud pricing and that one-time hardware costs were often included in subscription pricing or could be charged against capital budgets.
Commissioners and staff raised operational concerns: a cloud phone system would depend on Internet connectivity (Allo), so outages could disable voice services unless contingency plans were implemented; the vendor acknowledged that risk and said internet service would remain in place and that vendor/providers typically maintain availability guarantees but that the county would remain exposed to internet outages.
County staff asked the vendor to provide a more detailed cost breakdown and directed IT staff to ask Allo for the last 90 days of invoices so the county could compare current billed charges against proposed savings. The IT representative agreed to obtain invoices and produce a comparative analysis for commissioners in the coming weeks. Several commissioners requested more granular line-item cost comparisons that broke out which phones/functions require premium licenses and which users could work with lower-cost options.
No final procurement decision was made at the meeting; county staff said they would bring back a vendor comparison, an itemized savings estimate and clarified Allo billing details before the board considered any budget approval for a replacement system.
