Philips Business Communications (PBC) has completed a R5 million upgrade of the telecommunications system at the Sasol Secunda plant.
According to Leon van Vreden, PBC sales engineer, this project is the culmination of many years of mutual effort between PBC and Sasol.
The installation required 6 000 extensions divided into two nodes - Sasol Synthetic Fuels (SSF) which had 4 400 extensions and Sasol Technology, which had 1 600 extensions. The basis of the system is two IS3090 Philips` voice servers running the latest software version Call @Net 2.4.
A significant proportion of the extensions are digital which helps meet the challenge of the vast distances existing on this site.
"Our long distance digital interface is ideally suited to this application and we were able to use the clients existing cabling infrastructure without major modifications thereby reducing, substantially, both cost and implementation time," he said.
Van Vreden explained that this is not an ordinary site and communication is critical here.
"All emergency communication passes through this switch and we have been able to make this available with the 4/2 processor architecture. Failure of a card in the system will not affect it in any way and this redundancy, built into the design, ensures the level of service required by Sasol," he said.
One of the challenges at Sasol is to add capacity onto the existing infrastructure and Dect, which is being piloted on the site, enables the provision of telephone services to many more people by simply adding Dect cells rather than having to increase the basic infrastructure. Also, Dect will help increase mobility over the site especially in laboratory areas where mobility is highly sought-after.
John Treadway, PBC project manager, says the smooth switchover was made possible, mainly, by the unique working relationship between PBC and the Sasol team.
"The two technical teams work well together. The Sasol team has an intimate knowledge of the site and this was invaluable in making the project work as well as it has," said Treadway
Share
Editorial contacts