Case Study: City of Pforzheim achieves cost-effective, scalable VoIP and PBX modernization with Digium's Asterisk

Open Source PBX Solution Enables German Municipality to Take Advantage of VoIP Technology

The City of Pforzheim, a German municipality serving nearly 120,000 citizens with about 2,000 employees across 100 offices, needed a cost‑effective way to modernize its telephony and leverage existing copper and fiber infrastructure. The goal was to adopt VoIP while integrating with the city’s Alcatel 4400 PBX and retain a hybrid TDM/packet environment that would be stable, feature‑rich and easily expandable.

Working with BeroNet, Pforzheim deployed Digium’s Asterisk (summer 2004) with Digium interface cards, connecting 60 SIP phones and 1,700 ISDN PBX users. The project delivered IVR, ACD, phonebook, GUI and CRM integrations, and the city contributed German voice prompts to the open source community. The result was a more modular, reliable and functional communications platform that enabled custom applications via Asterisk’s API/AGI and paved the way for future gateways and a full Asterisk VoIP migration.

City of Pforzheim

Andreas Hurst

Director of Internet Technology