K-12 Phone, Intercom and 911 Systems
One carrier for your phones, intercoms and 911.
Ambit serves 64% of Alabama’s public school districts and more than 2000 schools nationwide, from rural county systems to the largest city districts.
FCC-licensed carrier. ISO 9001 certified. TIPS and ALJP contracts.
One vendor for your phones, intercoms and 911
Most districts we meet buy phones from one company, intercoms from another, internet from a third, and 911 compliance from nobody in particular. When something breaks, three vendors point at each other and the front office waits.
Ambit is the carrier, so we run the whole chain: SIP trunking, phones, intercoms, bells, 911 routing and location data, and the alerts that tell your team which room a call came from. One contract, one team, one number to call.
We have done this in more K-12 schools across Alabama than any other provider, so we know how schools actually run: bell schedules, summer install windows, and a superintendent who wants to hear about a 911 call before anyone else tells them.
What IT directors are telling us
Most of the districts we meet describe some version of the same problems:
- Our carrier is sunsetting analog lines and PRI circuits, and the quote just went up.
- Our intercom was installed before anyone on staff was hired.
- When the internet goes down, so do the phones.
- We are not sure our 911 calls send a room, only a building address.
- A substitute or fill-in SRO does not know the building, and we find out about a call after the fact.
- Too many vendors, and no one who owns the whole thing.
Each of these has a fix, and the fixes work best together. A free communications audit shows you where you stand.
Everything your campuses run on, from one carrier
Start with one piece or replace all of it. Everything below works on its own and works better together.
Phones and carrier
Phones for classrooms, offices and districts, with simple PBX management and 911 built in.
Replace aging PRI and analog lines with a digital connection from the carrier that owns the call path. We port your numbers ourselves, and your existing phone system keeps working.
Softphones, mobile apps, chat and video for staff, managed from one dashboard.
Intercom and audio
Two-way audio, call buttons, bells and zoned paging, on-premise so it keeps working when the internet does not. When designed in, call buttons can place 911 calls with room-level location.
Bell scheduling and emergency alerts
Custom tones, building zones and automated alerts from one interface.
Teacher microphones with voice uplift
Clearer classrooms and less strain on teachers’ voices.
911, safety and compliance
Meet Ray Baum’s Act NG911 compliance, Kari’s Law and Alyssa’s Law requirements with verified location data, 933 testing and PSAP coordination.
When anyone dials 911 or 933, ALERT shows your team the exact room on a floorplan and sends email and chat notifications within seconds.
One portal for the live health of every phone, speaker, trunk and failover system, and for keeping 911 location records current.
2D and 3D maps for responder coordination, device tagging and grant readiness.
Resilience
Looking for something specific? We customize the system around your goals.
Already have an intercom system?
You may not need to replace it. If your analog intercom still works, we can integrate it with a VoIP phone system through a dedicated paging line. If it is failing or no longer supported, we install a new IP intercom designed around your buildings.
We do not retrofit analog speaker systems, because reliability matters too much when the intercom is part of your life-safety plan.
Not sure what you have? We will drive to your campus, walk your halls, look at your existing intercom, and write up a quote for your school at no charge.
Built around the 911 call
Most 911 calls from school campuses are medical emergencies. A call that shows only a building address leaves responders and your own staff searching a large campus. Ambit is an FCC-licensed carrier, so we can send room-level location from your phones and intercom call buttons, test it, and keep it current.
- Ray Baum’s Act and NG911 compliance: dispatchable location with every call, verified and tested.
- Kari’s Law: direct 911 dialing from any phone, with no prefix.
- Alyssa’s Law: panic alert readiness.
- ALERT: the right staff see the exact room within seconds.
Stop paying a premium for dial tone
Carriers are sunsetting analog lines and PRI circuits and raising prices on the way out. One district we work with was told five analog lines would cost $18,000 a month. SIP trunking replaces those lines with a digital connection over your existing internet, at a fraction of that. Districts have saved hundreds of thousands of dollars, and in some cases more than $1 million, by moving to SIP with us.
Keep the phones up when something fails
If your internet goes down, your phones should not. Ambit’s on-site LTE failover keeps outbound calling and 911 available. With an on-premise PBX and Ambit-hosted numbers, inbound calls survive too, and your on-premise intercoms keep working on their own.
ADMP checks that your backup is ready before you need it. In one live deployment it found hundreds of discrepancies between a primary and failover system and reconciled them in about 30 seconds, a job that used to take hours.
Planning a grant-funded project?
We give your grant writer the scope and specs for the phone and intercom side, so the application matches what we would install. We do not write or file grants. Ambit is available through ALJP and TIPS cooperative contracts.
E-Rate does not cover voice or intercom equipment, and our E-Rate guide explains what it does cover.
A partner that answers
Our phones ring in more classrooms, offices and athletic fields than any other provider in Alabama. AmbitCare, our U.S.-based support team, answers 24/7, with no call centers and no outsourcing. We work with IT directors, technology coordinators and superintendents to design systems around how your schools run, and we stay after the install.
What our school districts say
Patrick Robinson
Director of Technology, Jones County School District, Mississippi
Frequently asked questions
Straight answers for IT directors and superintendents.
Can Ambit replace our phones and intercoms together?
Yes. Ambit is the carrier, so phones, intercoms, 911 routing and alerts run as one system under one contract.
Do we have to replace our intercom?
Depending on what kind of intercom system you have, Ambit might be able to integrate. A working analog intercom can be integrated with VoIP phones through a dedicated paging line. We will do a free on-site visit to test whether we can integrate with your intercom.
Will it work with our existing phone system?
SIP trunking works with your existing PBX, so you can change carriers without changing phones.
How does a classroom 911 call show its location?
Phones and IP intercom call buttons can send room-level dispatchable location, and we test it with 933 calls.
Can we keep our phone numbers?
Yes. We port numbers in-house.
Is Ambit E-Rate eligible?
No. E-Rate does not cover voice or intercom equipment, so plan those costs from local or grant budgets. Our E-Rate guide explains what it does cover.
Start with a free communications audit
We review your phones, intercoms, 911 readiness and backup plan, and give you a phone and intercom budget you can take to your board. Prefer to talk first? Contact us.
