How Northwest Communication Cooperative Monitors Their Remote Sites

Northwest Communication Cooperative (NCC) was incorporated in 1951 to provide members in northwest North Dakota with a telephone system. Today, NCC strives to be the premier provider of telecommunication services by providing local telephone service, high speed internet, and cable television. They pride themselves on competitively-priced service and technical sustainability.

NCC operates out of 16 central offices and 25 towers to provide customers with these services. Each location, with its own equipment, must be monitored to ensure customer satisfaction and network sustainability.

Kory Olson, Network Technician for Northwest Communication

Kory Olson, a Network Technician at NCC, recently came out to DPS for Factory Training and shared his thoughts about NCC's DPS gear.

"We use our NetGuardians and T/Mon for monitoring battery voltage, observing temperatures, and for providing building access."

NCC uses DPS Devices to Monitor the Safety of their Network Infrastructure

Olson and NCC use NetGuardian RTUs in combination with T/Mon to monitor their remote sites. "We use our NetGuardians and T/Mon for monitoring battery voltage, observing temperatures, and for providing building access," explained Olson. "We have expensive equipment and we hardly give out keys to our sites. Now we know it's safe without having to worry about letting someone in who doesn't have a key."

"It's a great system because if a vendor or contractor needs to get into one of our sites, we can give them access without having anybody show up to let them in."

NetGuardians and T/Mon Save Technicians from Costly Truck Rolls

With the NetGuardians and T/Mon, NCC is able to monitor all of their towers and remote sites from a single location. "Our furthest tower is 75 miles out so we cover some distance," explained Olson. "It takes about an hour and fifteen minutes to get out there and it's all pretty rural."

DPS gear saves NCC valuable time and helps technicians like Olson avoid expensive truck rolls to remote sites. "It's a great system because if a vendor or contractor needs to get into one of our sites, we can give them access without having anybody show up to let them in," said Olson. "And if the power is out we call in the FFA in the middle of the night instead of checking the site ourselves."

With their customized monitoring system, NCC is able to see what's going on without having to send techs to remote sites.

"Our monitoring is used pretty heavily on the telephone side but not so much on the Ethernet side," he explained. "In the future we'll probably add more DPS monitoring to the Ethernet side."

DPS Factory Training Provides NCC Future Options for Advanced Ethernet Monitoring

Olson recently attended DPS Factory Training in California to learn about some of options offered by the NetGuardian and T/Mon. "Training has been really good," said Kory. "It's interesting to learn more about the equipment- you can use it for monitoring a lot of stuff."

By using the NetGuardian and T/Mon, Northwest Communications has a lot of options for customizing their systems in the future. "It would be nice to set up even more monitoring with the NetGuardian and T/Mon," said Olson. "Our monitoring is used pretty heavily on the telephone side but not so much on the Ethernet side," he explained. "In the future we'll probably add more DPS monitoring to the Ethernet side."