RT Communications dramatically reduces "all day" truck rolls with T/Mon, NetGuardians, and Building Access

RT Communications was created through the vision of Range Telephone Cooperative's Board of Trustees to provide the latest in telecommunications services to the residents of Wyoming. For over 20 years, RT Communication has been offering their customers the best services in high speed internet service, local and long distance voice service, business and residential telephone systems, bundled services options, and more. RT Communications provides services to about 10,900 customers.

RT Communications covers a large portion of vast Wyoming, making long truck rolls inevitable. "A truck roll for RT can take all day, and that's just to get there," said Seth LaVine, a IT Tech for RT Communications. "The tech then has to actually address the problem."

RT Communication relies on remote monitoring for complete site visibility

This map of Wyoming shows RT Communication's territories (outlined in black), located in the central and northeastern parts of the state. RT provides phone services to over 10,900 customers.

To reduce costly truck rolls, RT Communications relies heavily on remote monitoring equipment. They have implemented all majors parts of the DPS product suite, including a T/Mon master, NetGuardian RTUs, and the Building Access System for electronic door control.

Jeffrey City upgrade

Recently, RT Communications updated some DPS monitoring equipment they had at a remote site. "The equipment that we put in in Jeffrey City went off without a hitch," said Lavine. "The install only took about a 12-hour day, including travel."

With a long purchasing history with DPS Telecom, RT Communications has seen the DPS equipment evolve and improve over time. "Curtis Drake [with RT Communications] mentioned that the process of bringing this stuff online is a lot easier than when he had done it the last time," said Lavine. "It came right up, everything worked great."

Critical 911 operations

Reliable telephone and internet services are things that customers absolutely demand from their communications provider. Especially in rural areas like Wyoming, access to emergency services can mean the difference between life and death. "Lifeline is a service we offer and it's the reason for the reliability in the system," said Lavine. "To make sure that everything is up and running like it's supposed to - that's a critical operation."

Not only is RT Communications responsible for ensuring that the phone lines work in an emergency, they are also tasked with maintaining a record of what address is associated with each phone line. "And the 911 reporting, well that goes without saying," said Lavine. "If you miss an address out in these wide open spaces, it could be catastrophic."

RT Communications looks to add ASCII message parsing to their remote monitoring

RT is also looking to add ASCII to their normal monitoring functions. ASCII is a protocol for text alarms that provides more detailed alarm visibility than summary major-minor alarms. You can use ASCII to diagnose switch and router problems down to the exact card that's failed. This gives you the information you need to make the correct dispatch decision.

Lavine attended DPS Factory Training to learn more about ASCII. "Curtis Drake asked me to pay special attention to the ASCII part of the class, because apparently there are some things that he wants to implement - text messaging and some other things like that," said Lavine. "I am looking forward to getting into it."