Kuwait’s Ministry of Education, the country’s coordinating body for education and schooling, was moving all operations and personnel to a new headquarters this past year when they started to search for a reliable and stable networking solution. Previously, they were spread out across multiple office locations around the country and were now moving to a single headquarters consisting of two neighboring 11-floor buildings with thousands of offices and meeting rooms.
The Ministry of Education needed to build a new, modern communication solution that provided state-of-the-art features to allow staff to be productive and efficient in this new space. Because of the size of the new buildings as well as the thousands of people who would be working there, they required a stable and reliable telephony system to facilitate seamless communication amongst employees and beneficiaries.
The Kuwait Ministry of Education hired A-ISHAQ, a communication solutions distributor, to design and
build the communication network for their new headquarters. After considering solutions from Avaya,
Cisco and other major providers, the Ministry of Education chose a Grandtream communication solution
highlighted by UCM Series IP PBXs, GXP Series IP Phones, GXV Series IP Video Phones, and GXW Series
Gateways. This provided a complete, end-to-end solution all built using one brand to ensure seamless
integration and installation while also providing a strong price point. A-ISHAQ made the Grandstream
solution even better by offering highly trained and skilled staff to provide around-the-clock support to
help The Ministry get the most from their new communications platform.
The project was anchored by (10) UCM6510 IP PBXs, each serving a single department within the Ministry.
The UCM6510 allows the Ministry to support and unify multiple communication technologies, including
voice, video, surveillance, data, and facility access management into one central platform that can be
managed and accessed remotely. It provides hundreds of advanced features such as customizable call-routing,
multi-level IVRs, call queues, auto-attendant, call detail records, SIP video support, voicemail/fax
forwarding to email, and more. Each UCM6510 was interconnected using VOIP trunks to minimize traffic
between different departments and reduce traffic load. Also, each department had an E1 line connected
to a specific UCM6510, and several DIDs were dedicated to some employees (the total number of DIDs
exceeded 2000). The UCM6510’s multi-layer IVR was deployed to provide easy access to all services
offered by the Ministry and provided specific routing options for every type of caller, including employees,
students, and their guardians. This made accessing all educational services intuitive and
effortless.
To integrate traditional phone lines with their VoIP solution as backup, 64 CO-lines were assigned to vital
employees using Grandstream’s GXW4100 Series FXO gateways. Also, 1290 fax machines were added to
The Ministry’s network uses Grandstream’s GXW4200 Series FXS gateways as the Ministry relies on fax
in internal correspondence. For voice and video communication, A-ISHAQ deployed Grandstream’s
GXP1615 Basic IP Phones for staff employees in each department (a total of 3000+ devices). For
receptionists and department heads, Grandstream’s GXP2140 High-End IP Phones were deployed
and paired with GXP2200EXT Extension Modules (580 devices). To offer video collaboration options to
managers, A-ISHAQ deployed Grandstream’s GXV3370 IP Video Phone.