News Talk 94.1/AM 1600 Where The Upper Cumberland Talks
The City of Cookeville will soon utilize a new phone system following action taken by city council members Thursday.
Council unanimously elected to purchase the new Mitel MiVoice Connect system.
City Manager Mike Davidson said during Thursday’s council meeting several employees have experienced trouble with the current outdated system.
“We have some issues at some of our facilities,” Davidson said. “We work with Frontier to get those resolved. They work through that process and take care of that when those service issues arise. Seems Like [issues] seem to be arising more and more the last few years.”
Davidson said the city’s IT department determined the Mitel system would be the best fit based on the current cabling network and phone bill costs with Frontier.
“It’s a PC-based application as well as being used on a smartphone,” Davidson said. “We’ve done an analysis of the equipment that we need – the switches, everything that we can identify at this point – and the estimated cost is around $135,000.”
Estimates indicate the new Mitel system would cost approximately $8,000 to maintain after the first year of service.
The city’s IT department reports request-for-proposals will need to be issued for a new service provider, as no local companies currently offer service through the Mitel system.
Davidson said the city has the funding in their current budget to cover the purchase. However, City Council will still need to approve a budget amendment before the system can be installed.
