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University of Florida Seeks Information on Comprehensive Telephony Solution

An invitation to negotiate released Thursday seeks a new telephony solution to serve the entire university.

A digital image of a telephone.
Shutterstock/Pavel Ignatov
The University of Florida (UF) is inviting proposals from vendors for a complete telephony solution to support the entire institution.

The existing on-premises VoIP system encompasses PBX, voicemail, contact center, fax, emergency alerts and E911 services.

According to FY24-ITN-024, the vendor must provide a system that meets or exceeds the specifications:
  • The proposal will detail design elements for a highly available and redundant system, ensuring local call survivability across two on-premises data centers, eight kilometers apart, with 99.999 percent uptime
  • High-availability design requirements will necessitate the absence of single points of failure
  • The proposal will encompass telephony functionality supporting remote branch operations throughout the state of Florida
  • The proposal will cover telephony features that facilitate remote branch operations across Florida

The current system provides telephony services to the following:
  • 18,000 telephony endpoints in total: consisting of 18,000 VoIP handsets and 1,000 analog gateway devices
  • Among these, 16,500 handsets are situated in Gainesville, while 1,500 are distributed across various remote branch operations
  • The university possesses four complete telephone exchanges, equivalent to 40,000 DIDs (Direct Inward Dialing numbers)
  • PSTN access and DID ownership are anticipated to be upheld via the current arrangements with two separate SIP telecommunications companies (Lumen and AT&T)

Questions regarding the INT are due Feb. 22 at 11:59 p.m. Bids close on March 7 at 3:30 p.m. The contact listed for ITN-024 is Kyle Lautenschlager.
Cristina Carter is a Tallahassee-based staff writer. She has a bachelor's degree in English literature and a master's degree in international affairs, both from Florida State University.