Berlin-Tegel Airport

New communication system goes off the blocks

Berlin-Tegel Airport has decommissioned the telephone system it had been using for over ten years and instead switched to the HiPath 4000 Real Time IP System from Siemens. A soft migration strategy is allowing new features to be introduced but makes the whole process far more secure. It also leaves the door wide open to future advances. At the same time, the new configuration reduced costs considerably by reusing certain existing modules and phones.

The first thing that interested the management team was to map existing features onto the new system as smoothly as possible. But they also wanted to set up a state-of-the-art solution that would keep all their options open for developments over the next decade. Voice communication over existing data networks on the basis of the Internet Protocol – or “communication over IP” (or CoIP) for short – is one forward-looking topic for which Ludwig Turba, Manager Communication Systems at Berliner Flughafen-Gesellschaft mbH, definitely wants to be well-prepared. New network management opportunities and the use of unified messaging also had a bearing on the decision, however – as, of course, did the need to cut costs by minimizing maintenance outlay and making the system as failsafe as possible.

The airport’s telecoms experts scoured the market and compared offers from a number of vendors. In the end, however, they opted for the migration solution proposed by their existing supplier. “The economic feasibility study showed that we would still be able to use around 30 to 40 percent of our existing phones, as well as some of the modules in the existing system,” Turba recalls. In financial terms, that was a whole lot better than moving over to a completely new system. Moreover, this solution would also let employees continue to draw on existing expertise, without the expense of extra training measures.

During the migration project, 2300 ports on the old system were switched over to the new one, 640 phones were replaced by new optiPoint 500 models, and one fax server and one digital alarm and conference server were hooked up to the new platform. The voice mail system already in place was migrated to a central unified messaging system based on HiPath Xpressions. Now that HiPath Manager is implemented, centralized voice network management is also available.

Some of the new features became extremely popular almost before the system as a whole was up and running. One was the fact that callers are listed on the phone, allowing callbacks to be initiated at the push of a button. Another was the ability to check voice mailboxes from different locations.

“For us, the intersite use of applications will undoubtedly play a major role in future,” says Ludwig Turba, looking ahead. Unified messaging applications and the ability to dial phone numbers from within Microsoft Outlook are important topics – not to mention a full migration to CoIP.