TeliaSonera to supply Sweden’s largest IP telephony solution in Malmö

The Municipality of Malmö has decided to replace the conventional telecom technology used by its administrative departments with a modern IP telephony system. TeliaSonera has been selected as the main supplier of the new system. The project, to be launched this autumn, is the most comprehensive IP telephony undertaking in Sweden to date. Major cost savings and possibilities to provide better service were two important reasons behind the decision to deploy an IP telephony system.

Approximately 1,000 of a total of 11,000 connections will already be replaced with IP telephony by the end of September this year. The entire project is expected to be finished within about two years. Changing to digital technology will enable the municipality to offer better service to the general public and to the employees of the City of Malmö. Shorter telephone queues, voice-activated forms and the possibility to search through directories on telephone displays are some specific examples of the features of IP telephony. “TeliaSonera was the only supplier that could meet our requirements for service and support for such a large migration project. We have great confidence in TeliaSonera as an existing provider and we are pleased that we can benefit from their collective experience in this area,” says Ulf Linderoth, business area manager for Municipal Services within the municipality’s Service Administration. The investment cost, SEK 27 million, will already be recovered in the form of savings within four years. Today, the City of Malmö pays installation fees, for example, each time an employee changes a workplace, which is relatively often in a municipality of Malmö’s size. With the new IP-based system, the City can better utilize existing capacity in the form of infrastructure and technology. “We’re naturally very pleased and proud that the City of Malmö has selected TeliaSonera as the supplier for such a comprehensive project like this. We have been the municipality’s telephony provider since earlier and this project feels like we are taking an exciting new step together,” says Kenneth Broström, deputy head of the unit for public sector customers at TeliaSonera Sweden. In addition to telephone subscriptions, subscriptions for mobile phones, faxes and other subscriptions that are currently not part of the City of Malmö’s PBX system will be included in the new technical platform, which will be supplied by Cisco Systems.