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County IT staff recommends cloud-hosted phone system to fix dropped calls and consolidate billing
Summary
IT manager Ben Morgan presented a hosted phone system to replace an aging county setup, proposing a countywide rollout of 425 phones at a quoted monthly cost of $8,133.75. Commissioners asked staff to verify integration with 911 before moving forward.
Ben Morgan, the county's IT manager, told the commission the county's current phone system is 10'plus years old and no longer supported by its carrier and that intermittent dropped calls have affected dispatch and several county offices. "A phone system is quite complex," Morgan said, and the hosted solution would move equipment off-site to a secure cloud, provide failover between county sites and consolidate multiple vendor bills into a single monthly charge.
The proposal would replace four existing services and about 425 handsets countywide; Morgan said the vendor's quote includes phones, professional services and number porting and that the monthly charge would be $8,133.75. "If the phone breaks, they just bring out a new phone," Morgan said, explaining the vendor warranty and support arrangement.
Why it matters: commissioners and staff said call reliability and dispatch integration are the top priorities. Several commissioners reported dropped calls in Pell City and elsewhere, and one commissioner noted judges and the district attorney had noticed outages. Morgan said the next step is a technical meeting with InDigital (the county's 911 vendor) to ensure flawless integration with the dispatch 911 system; he called that a "deal breaker" if it failed.
What's next: staff will complete the InDigital integration check and finalize procurement and budget details before placing a recommendation on the next agenda. Commissioners emphasized they will not accept a change that risks public-safety communications; one commissioner said the rollout should be phased and tested to avoid disruption.
