Avtec announces ScoutLink to provide flexible dispatching options

ScoutLink’s front-end SIP interface is something new for the company, Williams said.

“We’ve had SIP on the back end; we can do PBX, we can do conferencing, and we’ll treat SIP devices like phones at end points,” Williams said. “What we didn’t have was the ability to take a SIP console that can do call ins—that can work on the front end—and put it basically in parallel with our other dispatch positions.

“That’s a new capability, and it’s on the front end of the system, where you’ve got your dispatcher interface.”

ScoutLink’s features and flexibility are housed in a small form factor that allows connections to a variety of devices in the field a lower cost than a Scout console, Williams said. Avtec has not announced the cost of the ScoutLink solution, but “the price point is lower than what you see in a full dispatch console … in some situations, you could cut that cost in half,” he said.

ScoutLink will feature the SIP interface at launch, but the company plans to develop more features for ScoutLink twice per year via software releases, according to the company press release.

“We see this as the launch device, and we see other things coming as we phase them in down the road,” Williams said. “This is just the start of a very expandable capability with ScoutLink.”