CenturyLink to provide IP-based voice services to Texas Health & Human Services Commission

CenturyLink (NYSE: CTL) has won a contract from the Texas Health and Human Services Commission (HHSC) to provide managed IP-based voice service for the agency's 400-plus statewide locations, illustrating its growing presence in the managed voice services market.

In order to migrate to the IP-based platform, the agency and CenturyLink have developed a hybrid IT approach that will use technology already owned by HHSC alongside new CenturyLink services. Under the terms of the agreement, CenturyLink will provide ongoing management of the agency's existing phone infrastructure, which includes a mix of IP-based phone systems and legacy analog phone systems.

A key element of the deployment is helping HHSC migrate to the cloud.

CenturyLink will migrate users of an analog phone system to CenturyLink's Managed Enterprise service suite: specifically, its Hosted Collaboration Solution, a VoIP and unified communications platform that is hosted in the cloud.

With this new system in place, Texas HHSC employees will be able to get access to a host of advanced voice calling features and UC applications. The service provider will also support HHSC's growing mobile workforce by providing UC tools that will enable employees to access messaging and calling features from multiple devices, even while working remotely outside of the office.

The HHSC will be able to take advantage of a host of supported and fully managed voice services, including Hosted VoIP, a cloud-based VoIP service, and SIP trunking, a VoIP service operated by on-premises equipment. Business and government customers can combine Hosted VoIP and SIP trunking systems to meet their own unique needs, such as supporting multisite office environments.

HHSC is just one of many new state government contracts CenturyLink has won.

In July, the telco won a contract to provide unified communications-as-a-service (UCaaS) to Iowa Communications Network (ICN), a statewide agency that will extend services to education, public safety and government users with what it says is transparent and fixed pricing.

For more:
- see the release

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