BALTIMORE -- Saving money is no longer the object in VoIP deployments among colleges and universities -- it is the search for converged communications and acceptance of the inevitable, panelists agreed at the VoIP summit this week held by ACUTA, the Association for Communications Professionals in Higher Education.

Five years ago vendors claimed VoIP installations would save money by reducing staff and eliminating the need for a dedicated voice network. “We’ve gotten past the idea that IP is going to save us a lot of money,” says Walt Magnussen, telecom director at Texas A&M University.

But schools are still moving in the direction of VoIP because PBX vendors are phasing out traditional TDM PBXs by not upgrading their features and pushing VoIP servers and gateways to link VoIP gear to traditional gear.

So Texas A&M is buying a VoIP Centrex service this summer that acknowledges that VoIP is inevitable, and now is the time to start moving in that direction, he says.

Still, the goal of savings persists among university board members whose knowledge of VoIP includes the view that it can save money. It takes some effort to convince them that it does not, Magnussen says.

“I don’t think we’re going to spend a whole lot more money or save a whole lot of money with VoIP,” he says. VoIP gear costs less but has a shorter life expectancy than traditional TDM. And it requires training and a higher level of technical ability to troubleshoot, he says.

Magnussen says it would be impossible to afford a quick swap-out of TDM. The cost would be $18 million, which is more than his department’s annual budget. “The universities with the highest percentage of VoIP installed are the smaller institutions where a lump-sum trade-out is financially feasible,” he says.

A slow transition makes it easier on faculty and staff who need to come to grips with the realities of VoIP, such as softphones, says Pat Todus, Northwestern University’s head of information technology. “The faculty can’t do that. They need a phone on their desk.” A phased approach allows them to learn a new system gradually, she says.

That is why Northwestern University chose VoIP vendor Nortel, Todus says. The vendor had gear with interfaces to the school’s old TDM switches so it can run both VoIP and TDM until the transition to VoIP can be completed.