City Colleges of Chicago - VoIP Services

Level-1 designed and deployed a district-wide VoIP solution to modernize communications across all City Colleges of Chicago campuses.

City Colleges of Chicago (CCC) serves more than 60,000 students across seven colleges and numerous satellite sites. The CCC system supports more students than the University of Chicago, Northwestern, Loyola, and DePaul combined. When the decision was made to modernize CCC’s voice systems, it wasn’t a peripheral upgrade. It was a systems-level change to how communication flows between buildings, departments, and campuses, how coordination happens in real time, and how the infrastructure supports continuity, responsiveness, and scale. 

Level-1 was selected to modernize CCC’s voice systems through the design and deployment of a comprehensive Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) solution. The implementation spanned all buildings and operational units across the CCC system. What began as a phone system upgrade became a complete reconfiguration of how communication functions across an urban educational network. 

Our scope extended to every unit and building associated with each CCC campus. We provided not just the hardware and software, but the underlying design intelligence- logical schematics, physical infrastructure diagrams, environmental parameters, and network readiness plans. We coordinated end-to-end project management, including walkthroughs, site surveys, installation scheduling, and post-installation inspections. Each solution was calibrated to ensure regulatory compliance, cost savings, and long-term operational stability.

What We Delivered 

• Engineering, design, installation, and testing of VoIP systems 
• Schematic and environmental infrastructure design across multiple campuses 
• Project management: walkthroughs, site surveys, scheduling, and inspection 
• Migration planning from legacy Centrex lines to IP-based systems 
• Coordination of circuit installation and disconnection 
• Functional demonstrations and compliance validation 
• System testing to eliminate noise, RF interference, and signal instability 
• Training and knowledge transfer to CCC staff 

Our role extended beyond installation. We also developed and executed the migration plan from existing Centrex lines, streamlining circuit usage, eliminating redundant costs, providing ongoing support and maintenance, thus preparing the network for continued digital evolution. All systems were tested against strict functional benchmarks, with complete demonstration and validation prior to CCC acceptance. This was a system-wide transformation delivered across multiple campuses, dozens of buildings, and hundreds of endpoints, which positioned CCC to manage communication with greater clarity, flexibility, and long-term operational control.