VOICE SERVICE FOR EDUCATION

Nextlink Voice Service for Education

Nextlink ranks #2 in districts served within the state of Texas. Nextlink services 78 School Districts with over 56,000 students across Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Nebraska. However, we remain #1 as the only service provider that fully commits to the communities of the districts we serve. The only other provider that ranks higher than us, in districts served, only focuses on the revenue generated by the district (ISD’s who are typically the largest employer in town).

It is much harder to take on an entire community vs. a single institution and Nextlink feels it is just as important that the teachers and students have access to the same speed and quality of service at their homes. This is where they plan curriculum, grade assignments, complete homework and research for projects assigned to the students. When we provide connectivity to a district, we always commit our coverage to the greater community.

As budgets change from traditional telephone systems and facilities to the internet and increased bandwidth, Nextlink Unified Communications assists you by managing your telecom budget and expenses while eliminating obsolete communications systems.

Now that telecom is no longer E-rate eligible, Nextlink Voice can enhance your unified communications strategy within the ISDs existing budgets without a huge, out-of-pocket expense.

Unified Communications Explained

What does Nextlink’s communications and collaboration solution mean to your district? Reliability, security, mobility, flexibility, scalability, and affordability. Set up conference calls and video meetings to reach any campus, board member, or classroom immediately. You can even customize your notifications systems for students and parents alike.

Education-Specific Security & Reliability

Your ISD requires the highest standards of security and reliability. Nextlink offers enterprise-class reliability so you can be sure that key personnel can be reached immediately. With Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Safeguards in place at four data centers geolocated for five 9’s reliability and backup, your phone systems will never go down, even in natural disasters.

Transport Layer Security (TLS) is a standard SIP request/response which has been encrypted. This operates in the exact same manner as the more traditional HTTPS. As SIP is only used for establishment, control, and teardown of calls, SIP over TLS does not encrypt the actual RTP voice traffic.

SRTP is the Secure Real-Time Transport Protocol; it encrypts the voice traffic. This differs from TLS as it uses opportunistic encryption to exchange keys. Since SIP over TLS already has negotiated a secure channel prior to any traffic being passed, SRTP exchanges its cipher key in the SDP of the encrypted SIP Message.