Govia Thameslink Railway (GTR) is one of the UK’s rail franchies runs the Southern brand in Hampshire, Surrey and Sussex and all of South London. It also covers the Thameslink service linking Brighton and Horsham across London to Peterborough, Luton and Cambridge.

With 238 stations, it is critical that communications are a priority.

AHmedia | London was brought in to replace all of the old PSTN technology with a new integrated VoIP platform across the network.

This was a multistage project that involved identifying the numbers that needed porting to a new platform and being on the ground, delivering handsets and training to station staff across the network.

As well as the telephony, the project also saw a hardware refresh with older HP network switches and routers being replaced with newer Aruba devices.

The new telephony network was not only much cheaper to operate, costs were saved by decomissioning the old PSTN network but it increased efficiency by allowing any station in the group to be searched directly from the handset.

Working in conjunction with Poly and Network Rail, the project delivered over £2 million savings in the first three years.