Boeing's Jumbo Phone-System Overhaul

<<<... With IP telephones, in theory, moving is as easy as unplugging the phone, taking it to the new location and plugging it back in. Assuming—conservatively—that each MAC (move, add or change) in an IP telephony system would cost half the industry's standard estimate of $100 per MAC in a circuit-switched environment, that's a potential annual cost reduction of at least $13.6 million.

Second, Boeing anticipates reduced long distance costs once it's able to route phone calls among offices in the U.S. and abroad over the corporate IP backbone (though the company declines to provide a dollar figure). A third source of savings is cabling, as the new system will require only one wire to go to every desk.

Naughton also estimates that maintaining a multivendor environment is 20 percent more expensive than using a single vendor for voice, data and video infrastructure.

"The general drawback with multiple vendors is you have to build a support organization around each environment," he says, adding that, at Boeing, "it seems like we have one of every phone switch that was ever manufactured." But the company will be paying considerably more for the IP phone sets employees use. Traditional circuit-switched phones— more>>>