TELEPHONES AND DATA COMMUNICATIONS

OVERVIEW
Information Technology responds to the  communications needs of the City with  a comprehensive telecommunications strategy that includes an array of voice services and high-speed data circuits.

TELECOMMUNICATIONS
The Telephone Division of the Information Technology Department provides coordinated, low-cost, comprehensive telecommunications services to City of Des Moines facilities.  Recent  advances in technology have enabled enhancement of the City's telephone system with Digital Switched Service (DSS).  Our DSS combines 48 Direct Inward Dialing (DID) trunks with 32 Call Out (CO) trunks to provide convenient and reliable telecommunications service.

VOICE COMMUNICATIONS
Voice communications include an extensive telephone system with local and long-distance services which utilize a centralized PBX.  This telephone system provides for conference calls, message forwarding, station speed calls, and a voice mail message delivery and storage system . PBX services are supplemented by Centrex services for facilities not served by the central PBX.

DATA COMMUNICATIONS
Data communication lines provide high-speed on-line connectivity for City operations.  Data communication includes access through our main system of data networks to fileservers and the Internet.  E-mail is received on an enterprise file server which is systematically checked and monitored by our anti-virus software. 

Future plans include combining voice and data communications on the same transmission lines, enhancing our ability to communicate with speed and ease.