Albuquerque Public Schools serves more than 65,000 students and 11,000 employees across 144 campuses and 165 sites, making it the 31st largest school district in the United States. Beyond classrooms, it operates as a complex infrastructure environment where life-safety systems, district-wide communications and student-facing technology all run on the same foundation: the network.

Behind every fire alarm, elevator phone, emergency call box and classroom phone line is a connectivity environment that must perform reliably—often invisibly—every single day.

As carriers across the country began retiring legacy copper, APS faced a critical question: How do you modernize the analog infrastructure behind life-safety systems serving 165 sites without losing a single day of compliance, reliability or student protection?

"A second-to-none security portfolio doesn't happen by accident," said Dr. Antonio Gonzalez, Deputy Superintendent of Operations at APS. "It happens by combining the right technology, the right partners, and a clear bar.”

Modernizing connectivity for K-12 life-safety

K-12 districts operate in a unique technology environment. Legacy POTS, T1 and analog circuits—once the backbone of school communications—are being actively retired by the carriers that built them. Copper technicians are harder to find. Renewal rates climb every cycle. And NFPA fire code and elevator code still require dual communication paths and 8 to 12 hours of battery backup at every site, regardless of what's happening in the carrier industry.

Historically, APS relied on the same analog connectivity model most districts grew up on: POTS and T1 circuits feeding fire alarms, elevators, security alarms, panic systems and emergency phones across a facilities portfolio that ranges from a 1929 elementary school on the National Historic Registry to brand-new campuses.

These constraints introduced operational and compliance risk. Aging analog lines became harder to support, costs climbed at every renewal, and the systems most critical to student and staff safety were running on infrastructure with no modern redundancy.

As the carrier industry's copper retirement timeline accelerated, the need for a more flexible, future-ready connectivity model became clear.

Building modernization with Lumen and IQ Wired

APS partnered with Lumen to retire legacy analog and migrate the district's life-safety and voice infrastructure to a modern, IP-based foundation.

The relationship between APS and Lumen reaches back through Mountain Bell, Qwest and CenturyLink—a presence in New Mexico that has spanned generations of district leadership and made both sides familiar with the buildings, schedules and operational realities of running a district that supports roughly 100,000 connected devices daily across more than 300 miles of district-owned fiber.

Sitting alongside Lumen on the engagement is IQ Wired, a Lumen Channel Partner with more than two decades of experience supporting customers through telecommunications change. IQ Wired supported large-scale deployment coordination across all 165 APS sites, anchored a delivery model built on collaboration and accountability, and provided reliable, consistent support throughout every phase of the transformation.

For an IT team working across 165 live school buildings, that kind of partnership matters as much as the technology itself.

"Lumen has been a really good partner for us through all of this," said Brian Thompson, Director of Technology Infrastructure at APS.

Operational confidence and measurable impact

APS sequenced modernization as a three-phase journey, prioritizing around what mattered most.

The first phase was financial: retiring the legacy T1 circuits draining the operating budget and returning roughly $600,000 a year to the district. The second consolidated district-wide call routing across all 165 sites onto Lumen® Voice Complete® and Lumen® PRI/SIP Trunking, replacing fragmented voice contracts with a single modern IP foundation. The third—the one most critical to student safety—used Lumen® Specialty Lines to replace the analog circuits behind every fire alarm, elevator, security alarm, and emergency phone with IP and cellular gateway technology, three-carrier failover, and code-compliant battery backup engineered to meet NFPA fire and elevator standards.

The combined impact reaches across the district. Life-safety systems now operate on architecture engineered for code compliance from the ground up. Voice services across 144 campuses run on a single platform, reducing the number of carriers, circuits and support contracts the IT team manages day to day. PRI and SIP trunking carry call traffic on infrastructure that scales with enrollment and program changes rather than locking APS into fixed-capacity legacy lines.

Financially, the three modernization phases together are projected to deliver more than $1 million in annual savings by retiring the district's most expensive recurring copper-based circuits and collapsing redundant vendor relationships.

"It's behind the walls. It's in the ceilings," said Rachel Weihe, Principal at Monte Vista Elementary. "But it's always about the kids."

Built for the next decade of district technology

With a modern, IP-based network foundation in place, APS is positioned to support the next decade of district technology—from expanded connected devices in every classroom to deeper integration between physical safety systems and digital infrastructure to tighter convergence between cybersecurity, building systems and student-facing technology.

As K-12 continues to blend learning, safety and operations on a single connectivity layer, the network will remain a critical enabler. Together, APS, Lumen and IQ Wired have built a foundation that delivers reliability and supports code compliance today while creating room for whatever district modernization asks of it next.

The result is infrastructure that protects what matters most, so APS can stay focused on what it does best: educating, supporting, and safeguarding the 65,000-plus students and 11,000 staff who walk through its doors every day.

To learn more about Albuquerque Public Schools' modernization, read the full customer success story.

Visit our customer story library to learn how organizations in virtually every industry are achieving their business objectives.

_{This content is provided for informational purposes only and may require additional research and substantiation by the end user. In addition, the information is provided "as is" without any warranty or condition of any kind, either express or implied. Use of this information is at the end user's own risk. Lumen does not warrant that the information will meet the end user's requirements or that the implementation or usage of this information will result in the desired outcome of the end user. All third-party company and product or service names referenced in this article are for identification purposes only and do not imply endorsement or affiliation with Lumen. This document represents Lumen products and offerings as of the date of issue. Services not available everywhere. Lumen may change or cancel products and services or substitute similar products and services at its sole discretion without notice. ©2026 Lumen Technologies. All Rights Reserved.}