Kristian McCann sits down with Ryan Zoehner, CEO at Algo, and Bryan McCarthy, VP Global Partnerships at Algo, to explore how education providers can take unified communications beyond screens and extend it reliably across the entire campus.

Schools have relied on copper wire PA systems for decades — and for a long time, they did the job well enough. But as campuses grow, those legacy systems are showing their age in two very specific and very costly ways.

First, the infrastructure itself. Copper wire PA networks are fixed and rigid. Adding a new speaker to a new classroom, a new building, or even a newly partitioned space isn't a simple plug-and-play exercise — it means running new cabling, commissioning physical installations, and absorbing costs that quickly spiral when a district is managing multiple sites.

The second problem is these systems are one-way by design. Typically, the only person who can broadcast across the campus is the principal or a designated administrator triggering from a central control point. A teacher in a classroom who spots a safeguarding concern, a member of staff in a corridor who witnesses an incident, a caretaker in a building on the far side of campus — none of them can initiate a communication to the rest of the school.=

This is the problem Ryan Zoehner and Bryan McCarthy address head-on in this conversation. From classrooms and corridors to playgrounds, gymnasiums, and auditoriums, they unpack why schools are some of the most demanding communication environments in any sector — and how modern IP endpoints close the gap between UC platforms and the physical spaces where staff, students, and visitors actually live and work.​

Watch the conversation to learn:

• Why education campuses are so challenging to keep consistently connected, with fragmented legacy PA, telephony, and security systems spread across multiple buildings and spaces.
• ​ How integrating UC platforms with IP endpoints helps schools replace siloed phone and PA systems with a cohesive, district-wide communication layer—without needing to rip and replace everything at once.
• ​ How UC-connected endpoints support everyday operations, from targeted classroom announcements and recess reminders to more efficient IT management through centralized monitoring and updates.
• How secure intercoms, two-way audio, and visual alerting enhance campus safety—from controlled door access to rapid, easy-to-trigger emergency notifications that staff can initiate from the UC clients they already use daily.
• Practical strategies for modernizing on a budget, including hybrid deployments that bridge existing analog infrastructure with new IP devices via paging adapters and open-standard SIP technology.
• ​ What a truly future-ready education environment looks like: open standards, layered systems instead of disconnected silos, and centralized management at scale to support changing needs over the long term.

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