The Public Trust plans to replace its PABX system with Voice over IP, which it will roll out to 34 sites across the country.
Public Trust enterprise architect Ross Payne says the decision to go down the VoIP path was made after considerations of the financial benefits.
"The equipment price has dropped to the point where there's a positive net present value in doing it," he says.
The Public Trust's present telephony and network setup is outdated, he says.
Tenders closed last week and prosepective vendors were required to include two reference sites in their submissions.
By choosing VoIP, Public Trust is going down the same path as the Ministry of Social Development and Housing New Zealand as major public sector VoIP adopters.
The ministry installed a Cisco VoIP system in 2000, which was one of the biggest in the world at the time and Housing NZ tendered earlier this year for a converged voice, data, videoconferencing and mobile telecoms system.
A request to Housing NZ for an update on the tender wasn't received by Computerworld's deadline.