Tadiran Boosts IIT Bombay's Communication System

IITs are acknowledged as the most prestigious technical institutes not only in India but also around the world. IIT Bombay is one such institute famous not only for the quality of research, but also delivering best of breed students to the IT industry. The Institute is also renowned for being tech-savvy; enhancing its infrastructural facilities by adopting latest technologies.

In line with its constant endeavours to provide better facilities to its students, the Institute recently deployed VoIP solution from Tadiran Telecom.

Obsolete communication system

With the number of students at IIT Bombay growing by the year, the communication system connecting the various hostels and departments was proving to be unsatisfactory.

As M N R Rao, manager telecommunication, IIT Bombay, informs, “Some of the most challenging requirements for us are Voice over IP from within the campus LAN with possibility of defining different COS and provisioning soft phones to the hostels within the campus. There is also a need for remote shelf interconnectivity over optical fibre between various parts of the campus, caller ID on analog stations for internal as well as external calls and connectivity between two systems over ISDN with feature transparency using QSIG."

The Institute was on the look out to centralise the segmented system of communication within the campus. At the same time, they also wanted to deploy a wireless system that would be flexible, requiring no further training.

Installing Tadiran’s Flexicom 6000

As a government run institute, cost was a major concern for IIT Bombay when they decided to get rid of their outmoded communication system. The VoIP solutions of various vendors like Siemens, Ericsson and Alcatel was discussed, before the Institute gave Tadiran Telecom the go-ahead, due to the cost-effectiveness of its solution.

The Institute has deployed two boxes of Flexicom 6000 with a capacity to accommodate 5000 users at a time. IIT Bombay is now using around 3500 lines at a time. The project was completed within 3-4 months at a total cost of Rs 1.5 crore.

The new system covers an area of around 550 acres. Two remote ENet connections have been installed at two different locations to provide better coverage. The solution required provision of 3,500 voice ports with two remote shelf units, QSIG networking between two systems and deployment of IP flexsets to work over IITB Gigabit LAN switch, Voice over IP through H.323 Net meeting clients through FlexiGate PRI and a large flexAir DECT environment in their administrative blocks.

“The major challenge was to compete with the other players and provide a solution suitable for IIT Bombay as it has a vast campus. After visualising their problems, we decided to install two Flexicom 6000 to accommodate the load and provide a congestion free communication environment,” explains Rajnish Gupta, director, Marketing, Tadiran Telecom, India.

Scalable connectivity across the campus

Using IP as the medium of communication, the solution has resulted in better connectivity across the campus. There is now excellent scalability and connectivity between various remote ends of the campus. WAN and UGW bandwidths are used for other applications like data transfer during off peak hours. 2500 analog phones, 100 digital sets QSIG with another Flexicom 6000 voice mail and email integration with ICMC Coral View 2 operators and 100 DECT FlexAir handsets are providing better connectivity options for the faculties and students inside the campus.

Currently, each hostel has with two to three lines; however the management plans to upgrade it in the near future. “As we are a government run institute, we have to wait for the policy decisions. After getting permission from the higher level, we will upgrade the whole system,” concludes Rao.