Seal of the County of Los Angeles

A few days ago, Broadband California submitted a list of questions to Marie Nunez, the Strategic Planning Customer Services Director in the Internal Services Division of the County of Los Angeles.

A few days later, she supplied Broadband California with answers to all these questions, attractively formatted, completely on point, extremely responsive and a model for all government officials to emulate in their dealings with the media and the public.

The questions submitted by Broadband California and the responses provided by Ms. Nunez can be found below, in a re-numbered copy of those answers:

1. Which part of the LA County government is responsible for providing phone services for County agencies?
The Internal Services Department provides phone services for most County agencies.

2. From whom does LA County now get its phone services?
The County has a contract with SBC for its telephone services except long distance. Long distance service is currently provided by AT&T.

3. How much service is it getting?
The contract includes most all SBC services: local dial tone, Centrex, private line, local and LATA toll calling, ATM and frame relay services, etc.

4. What kind of a service plan does it have?
The contract requires SBC to provide services based on performance Service Level Agreements.

5. How much does it pay annually for these services?
The 2003/04 fiscal year expense was approximately $$36,714,186.

6. To what extent has LA County already started using VoIP for its needs?
The County began implementing a few pilot systems of VoIP a few years ago.

7. Where is that happening?
The Internal Services Department has a VoIP system in East LA , the Sheriff’s Department has a VoIP system in Norwalk, and the Community Development Commission has a VoIP system in Monterey Park.

8. Any feedback yet on how satisfied users are with the VoIP services they're using?
The above departments report that the users are satisfied with the systems.

9. From whom is LA County getting these VoIP services?
All the above VoIP systems are using County owned equipment. The County currently does not use any external VoIP providers.

10. What plans does LA County have for using VoIP more extensively?
The County plans to use VoIP systems for all new facilities and for replacement of any PBXs that are beyond their useful life.

11. What procedures will LA County use in acquiring additional VoIP functionality for itself?
The County acquires new systems and services through competitive procurements.

12. What is the timetable for the switch-over, if there is one?
There is no timetable for complete switch over. Migration to VoIP will be gradual.

13. For what reasons would LA County be switching to VoIP?
The County is switching to VoIP because that is what the market is now providing and in the long term the convergence of technologies will provide for reduced costs and improved productivity.

14. How much money does LA County expect to save by switching to VoIP?
We see little, if any, initial savings from VoIP. However, as the amount of VoIP in the County expands, savings based on the use of existing infrastructure, could provide 10% to 20% reduction over traditional TDM PBX systems.

15. How will more extensive use of VoIP by LA County influence the way it provides itself with broadband connectivity in general?
We see little impact on broadband connectivity to the Internet. However, our internal IP network will require some additional bandwidth and Quality of Service configuration changes.

This information was "supplied by County of Los Angeles' Internal Services Department in conjunction with the Chief Information Officer on January 26, 2005" to Broadband California and its readers.