Ensuring Swift Public Safety Through Effective Communications
- Client: Bethlehem Township Volunteer Fire Company
- Location: Miller Heights, Bethlehem Township, PA
The Bethlehem Township Volunteer Fire Company has been responsible for fire prevention and suppression, rescue services, and emergency medical services in Bethlehem Township and its surrounding communities in Northampton County, PA, since 1946.
When their existing phone system was on its last leg, the team at Bethlehem Township Volunteer Fire Company reached out to HLV Technologies. We performed a site survey, and found a phone system that had been discontinued for a decade. We realized that the dated design was woefully inadequate for their expanding telecommunications needs.
While the company had grown from its humble roots in a stone neighborhood firehouse to a large main station with three satellite substations, the existing phone system was designed for a single-building on-premises environment.
HLV’s team was able to upgrade their phone system with an NEC SL2100 communications server, which allowed them to reuse their existing wiring at the main station, saving on implementation time and costs.
Additionally, the road map forward includes the ability to network all of their community substations together using a combination of SLNet for site-to-site connectivity, as well as remote VoIP telephones for the smaller satellite stations that do not require a full communications server.
For continuity of services, their incoming infrastructure is a combination of phone connections from a diverse portfolio of phone providers: SIP trunks, Voice over Cable TV, and Plain Old Telephone Service (POTS) lines from the local telephone carrier.
When the main station goes offline, the SIP trunks automatically forward their phone lines directly to an answering service, which ensures continuity of their non-emergency interfacility transports. Emergency calls are automatically routed to the Northampton County 9-1-1 center.
