The problem
Through the 1990s the University was growing faster than its phone system could follow. It ran a PABX that had simply run out of capacity, and whole faculties were waiting on extensions that did not exist yet. A university is not one building, it is a suburb. Nine thousand extensions, its own postcode, and departments that could not wait eighteen months for a new switch.
What we did
Cititel supplied Commander systems that hung off the existing PABX extensions to buy capacity while the replacement was decided. Later we installed Exicom systems in their place, after finding a way to make the digital system deliver earth recall through a DTMF code, which is what made them usable on that network at all.
Fifty-plus extensions went into faculties and the Finance Department. Some of those were only in service six months before the Ericsson MD110 rollout reached them, which was the point: they were there so the University could keep working while the long decision was made.
We were then asked to maintain the whole University. Cititel had five technicians on site full time, plus a full-time Ericsson-trained MD110 technician, all Cititel staff, working out of the PBX enclosure room.
What changed
The University got capacity in weeks instead of waiting on a switch replacement, and it got a maintenance team that lived on site rather than one that visited. Cititel stayed until the contract went out to tender.
At the time it was the largest MD110 installation in the Southern Hemisphere.
The scale of it
Nine thousand extensions, a campus with its own postcode, and Cititel staff on site every day for years. Most of what we fit today is a single office, a workshop and a front desk. This is the other end of what the same team can do, and it is not a claim, it is a job we did.