TLN VoIP Q&A Document VoIP RFP Questions as of 2/4/2015 1. My sales team asked me if you were also going to post a 470 for this service. a. No. TLN is not submitting the VoIP solution for e-rate reimbursement. 2. Would you send me a version that is in Word pages and the Excel pages too? That would make it easier expedite the process and integrity of the documentation. a. See attached documents in email dated 2/4/2015 VoIP RFP Questions as of 2/6/2015 1. Are you looking for a standalone VoIP proposal or are you looking to use the existing internet connections? a. We prefer to use the existing internet connections since all the listed libraries except Highland (Comcast fiber) and Fowlerville (Wow coax) are on the TLN WAN and we know they have bandwidth room for VoIP, however, we are open to other solutions. 2. If TLN is using existing connections, did AT&T place QoS on the connections? a. AT&T is not providing QoS/CoS. We re open to suggestions. 3. In Appendix A, what does the column entitled: What would your municipality in partnership with your library) be interested in a TLN hosted VoIP telephone solution? mean? a. This means that the library is interested in a TLN VoIP solution. We asked the libraries if they would like to partner with their municipality and shared VoIP services. Of the 4 libraries that said Yes, only the Waterford Twp municipality shares the WAN connection with their library currently. 4. Could you please clarify exactly how many buildings/locations we are to bid? Is it just the 26 that are on attachment A? Or is it attachment A plus the 92 library buildings in section 1.0? a. The total number of locations to be bid is the 26 buildings listed in Attachment A plus the 4 municipalities Garden City, Highland Township, Lincoln Park, Waterford Township. VoIP RFP Questions as of 2/9/2015 Note: some questions below for asking for further details. The answers will be part of Phase II. What is Phase II? When finalists are determined, the finalists will provide additional questions that will need to be asked of the libraries. 1. Does ATT provide the SLA requirement outline in section 3.6? a. AT&T provides their SLA, yes. But the VoIP provider needs to provide their own SLA for up time since it s a cloud hosted service. 2. Do you have the required software/cards in your Cisco 2921 and 4331 for voice traffic routing? a. We recommend using a VLAN option rather than adding cards to the routers. 3. What is the connection type for Highland? a. Highland will be moving off of Comcast Coax to Comcast cable as of July 1, 2015. They will not be directly connected to the TLN WAN. They will have a VPN connection to TLN s services. Page 1 of 5
4. What is the connection speed and connection type for Fowlerville? a. WOW cable. The director is checking into the actual down/up speed. They will be upgrading to WOW fiber once it becomes available. Added 2/11 bandwidth speed is 15mb down and 2mb up 5. In Section 4.1 you are asking us to connect to the existing cabling infrastructure, will your staff be upgrading the locations that do not have existing Cat 5E / Cat 6 at the desired phone locations to have the infrastructure Ethernet ready? a. We will coordinate with cable vendors to providing cabling where necessary for each library. At this time, VoIP vendors do not need to be concerned with cabling. That would be Phase II of the project. 6. Do any other Libraries use a Door Box controller like Highland Township? a. I do not know the answer to this. Part of Phase II. 7. Do we have any updated information from Auburn Hills like lines or sets? a. See attached Attachment A revision with details for Auburn Hills 8. Do we have any updated information from Berkley like lines or sets? a. See attached Attachment A revision with details for Berkley. 9. Do we have any updated information from Fowlerville like lines or sets? a. See attached Attachment A revision with details for Fowlerville. 10. I need to know the breakdown of how many 6, 12, 24 button or color phones required. a. Please provide ranges of pricing. We do not have that information at this time. That will be part of Phase II. See Attachment A for current numbers of phone handsets. 11. Who is providing POE switches? a. Each library. If a library requires a POE switch, TLN will assist them with purchasing. 12. Will POE switches support vlan tag for voice QOS? a. Yes. Most libraries are standardizing on Cisco brand switches. Further details will be provided in Phase II. 13. Are all locations cat5e ready? a. It depends. See Attachment A. 14. Do you require MPLS at all locations? a. This RFP is for VoIP only not Internet. 15. Will you require data and voice connectivity or voice only? What s your bandwidth requirements? a. Voice only. All libraries already have internet. Section 1.0 Introduction explains the current environment and bandwidth ranges. Each library has sufficient bandwidth to accommodate VoIP except possibly Fowlerville. 16. How many published numbers do you have? DID, POTS, etc.? a. Unknown at this time. Part of Phase II 17. Do you require 911 per location or per phone set? a. See Section 6.7 18. Do you have any 800 numbers? Page 2 of 5
a. See Attachment A. Additional information will be part of Phase II. 19. What is your average LD usage per month per location or for all locations? a. Unknown at this time. Part of Phase II. 20. How much rack space is available in each location? a. Unknown at this time. Part of Phase II. 21. Is there a diagram of how all the locations are connected including switch types, firewalls, circuits, etc? a. Part of Phase II VoIP RFP Questions as of 2/11/2015 1. Would TLN consider a QoS enabled MPLS circuit and centralized SIP for all the libraries versus broadband for PSTN connectivity? a. We would be open to it but we suspect the price tag would be too high. The VLAN solution should work OK. Please feel free to address this in the bid response. 2. Would sites without DID s want them? a. Unknown at this time. Part of Phase II. Please indicate in the bid response if DID s are a requirement of the solution. 3. What is the total number of users that need to be supported day one? a. Attachment A shows the number of current handsets. The number of actual users is unknown. This would be part of Phase II to get further details. Please provide pricing in ranges such as 50-100 users, etc. if your solution is priced out by number of users. VoIP RFP Questions as of 2/13/2015 1. The four municipalities Garden City, Highland Township, Lincoln Park and Waterford Township are not listed on Attachment A. Can you please send me the information for these four locations? a. I added the municipality addresses for Garden City, Highland Township, Lincoln Park, Waterford Township and Berkley. I do not have the other information for them at this time. That will be part of Phase II. I also added another library Ferndale. The entries in Red were updated this time around on the spreadsheet. There s a total of 32 entities now. 2. The municipality of Berkley is listed as being interested in the VOIP solution. Can you please send the information for them as listed on Attachment A? a. Berkley s information was updated and a revision resent on February 9. It s also included in the updated Attachment A for this Q&A version. 3. Would you like to reuse the Mitel phones in Auburn Hills if possible since they were just purchased in 2013? a. The library phones are part of the municipal system. They are exploring having their own system so, the answer is No. 4. Do you prefer to have the fax lines as copper POTS? a. Not necessarily. We re open to your solution. 5. Would you entertain a fax server solution that could be used for some or all of the libraries in the network? a. Yes. We would be interested. 6. Do you need conference phones included in the quote for the locations that use conference bridges or do you have conference phones that will need integrated with the new solution? a. The answer is unknown at this time. Please include a price for the conference phone in your bid response. We ll get actual data as part of Phase II. Page 3 of 5
VoIP RFP Questions as of 2/19/2015 1. Our solution does not have a feature that notifies the front desk of a 911 call being made. The question would be if we meet all other requirements, would this be a disqualifying situation? a. No. That would not be a disqualifying situation. In your response, please qualify this feature and what your solution does provide for 911 calls. 2. We currently do not offer 4 digit dialing but it is in Beta Testing now. The other thing that I saw was the request to have an "All lines busy," message. It is my understanding that since we allow bursting, there is not any limit to call paths, thus no message is needed. The RFP calls this feature out to be a "required" feature. If we do not have these features, will we be disqualified? a. Thank you for the question. There will not be an immediate disqualification. This would be pending Phase II. My recommendation is to qualify the response with the features you do have and any expected timelines for providing a certain feature. 3. After reading through the RFP, we have a clarification question around the 911 piece. Section 6.7 991 Service Support. Are you saying that if someone dials 911, you want us to divert call to a conference between PSAP and receptionist? a. Yes, you are interpreting that correctly. However, if your solution does not provide this feature, please indicate in your response what the 911 capability is of your solution. VoIP RFP Questions as of 2/19/2015 continued 1. For the entries that have T1 as the phone line type in Appendix A - Column E and list only 2 or 3 phone lines (Belleville and Lincoln Park for example), are these actual T1 voice circuits (PRIs) or POTS lines? a. I m not sure of the answer to that. This information will be requested from the libraries in Phase II. 2. Do you require advanced reporting capabilities to be able to charge back individual libraries for their portion of the hosted VoIP solution? a. Yes. That would be beneficial if it s available. 3. For the cordless phones listed, do these libraries have a wireless network in place to support a wireless IP phone, or do you require the existing cordless phones to be tied into the VoIP system via an FXS connection or analog gateway? a. Both scenarios probably apply. Please provide a solution that addresses both. 4. For the Farmington Community Library, Appendix A shows 80 phone lines and 60 direct dial lines, but nothing listed for the number of desktop and wall mounted telephones. How many phones will be part of the VoIP solution for Farmington? 5. For the Farmington Community Library, are there any cordless phones and voice mail requirements? Attachment A has these fields blank. a. Main branch has 70 phone lines, 70 extensions and 55 voice mail boxes. Branch has 10 phone lines, 20 with voice mail and 30 extensions. They have no cordless phones. 6. Overhead Paging: Do you own your own overhead paging equipment or does this need to be specked into this bid? If you own your own equipment, please provide make and model of amplifiers to determine correct interface required. a. The overhead paging that TLN has is part of the existing phone system. Please go ahead and spec out what would be needed for overhead paging. 7. Waterford location shows 400 lines, is this a typo? If so what is the correct number of lines currently. If correct, please explain. a. This is the total for both the city and the library. I m not sure if it s a typo or not. Clarification will be provided in Phase II. 8. Would TLN be willing to provide a spoke on its Ethernet network to give direct access for the VoIP Server? a. TLN does not want the VoIP traffic to come through TLN. TLN cannot provide 24/7 uptime. That s why we are looking at a cloud hosted solution. Page 4 of 5
9. Section 3.6 Supplier will provide service level agreement A hosted phone system provider cannot provide an SLA for latency and packet delivery on AT&T s ASE network. AT&T s SLA should cover this part of the question. Does this question imply that the hosted provider must also be providing the data network? a. No. We re aware that AT&T has their SLA for network connectivity. The SLA we re looking for with the VoIP vendor is ensuring the hosted VoIP system is up and running along with all the features. 10. Section 6.9 Features Please describe in more detail of what you are looking for with this Emergency notification: Ability to discretely contact Security staff via a radio, cell phone, pager, etc. Also, how you are doing this today. a. If library staff are having an issue with a patron, they want the ability to contact Security Staff. I don t think they have this capability now. Part of Phase II for more details. Please provide a solution that you think will meet our needs. 11. Are the cordless phones today digital, wifi, analog or SIP? a. I m unsure. Probably a mix. Part of Phase II. 12. Call Center is mentioned, is there any callcenter utilization now or planned for the future? If so, please explain? a. On Page 23, items 5 & 6 disregard call center agent and supervisor fee 13. The last page lists the summary of exhibits were these supposed to be attached/received as part of the RFP or is this how you want our responses for each section to be titled? a. Please see section 2.1. 14. Although you indicate how many total phones you have at each location, we need to know how many of each type of equipment (as based on your definitions for small, medium, large phones, etc.) you require, or want included in the Equipment Schedule in Section 9.1. a. We recommend providing a cost in tiers for each of the different sizes. I don t have exact quantities at this time. 15. What is/are the cordless phone systems at Bloomfield Township and Plymouth? Do they require replacement or can they be IP enabled? a. Unknown at this time. Part of Phase II TLN Comment: I applaud your efforts to be as specific and detailed as possible. I did my best to include the information you may need to provide the best response possible. I realize Attachment A is not all inclusive. Once the bid finalists are chosen, we can discuss whether a new survey is the best way to go to request details or if an in-person meeting with all the interested libraries would work better. Regarding quantities of phones, specific functionality required, etc. We recommend providing cost baselines for x number of desktop and wall mounted phones, voice mail, etc. My suggestion is to provide pricing in tiers. The libraries are not branches of The Library Network so I don t have this type of detailed information at my fingertips. In your bid response, introduce us to your VoIP solution, what are the benefits of your solution? Does your solution meet the required areas? If not, what is your alternative solution? We re open to all solutions but it does need to be cloud-based and not hosted here at TLN. Page 5 of 5