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West River Cooperative Telephone Company (WRCTC), a rural telecom cooperative serving the Bison, South Dakota area, needed dependable remote-site monitoring that could support clear after-hours decisions. WRCTC standardized on DPS Telecom monitoring (including NetGuardians and T/Mon) and worked with DPS to build ASCII-based rules for more actionable visibility.
| Industry | Telecommunications (telephone and internet service provider) |
|---|---|
| Company Type | Member-owned cooperative telephone company |
| Geography / Coverage | Bison, South Dakota area; remote sites approximately 30 miles from headquarters |
| Primary Challenge | Move from summary dry-contact alarms to more detailed, actionable visibility for remote cabinets - especially for power and battery conditions during storms and after hours |
| Solution Deployed | NetGuardian RTUs with discrete monitoring, T/Mon NOC upgraded to T/Mon LNX, and ASCII-based rules for derived alarm logic and cabinet power visibility |
| Key Result | Reliable monitoring with practical after-hours alarm decisions, reduced troubleshooting effort, and improved awareness of which cabinets are impacted during power events |
| Implementation Timeframe | Primary DPS monitoring system in place since 2004 (with later T/Mon upgrade) |
| Products Used | NetGuardians; IAM; T/Mon NOC; T/Mon LNX; Building Access System |
West River Cooperative Telephone Company (WRCTC) was officially organized on October 23, 1953. Today, WRCTC provides telephone and internet services to more than 3000 members in the Bison, South Dakota area.
Eric Kahler is the Central Office Technician for WRCTC. His role includes maintaining visibility across remote network sites and responding efficiently to outages and site issues, including after-hours events.
In 2004, WRCTC decided to upgrade its legacy monitoring equipment and implemented DPS Telecom equipment as its primary monitoring system. As Kahler described the deployment: "We deployed the IAM and NetGuardians with serial-based ECUs out at all our remote sites," and "we have been utilizing the Building Access System since 2004."
Over time, WRCTC identified a common challenge for distributed networks: summary alarms are useful, but they do not always provide enough context to pinpoint issues quickly, especially when sites are far from the central office and weather events cause multiple simultaneous power problems.
WRCTC's current approach emphasizes discrete, dry-contact alarming from monitored equipment: "Today we monitor all of our delivery equipment through the discretes on the back of the NetGuardians. We only monitor the critical, major, and minor dry contact points on the back of the equipment."
This provides essential notification but can require additional steps to determine the exact scope of a fault. Kahler gave a storm scenario: if multiple cabinets lose commercial power, the team may have to log in to equipment to determine which locations are affected, instead of having that intelligence delivered automatically in the alarm stream.
Remote geography makes this more than a convenience issue. Kahler explained that WRCTC sees frequent winter storms and that many sites are about 30 miles away. In these conditions, reliable visibility can directly influence dispatch decisions, response time, and how quickly service can be restored.
WRCTC's monitoring architecture centers on DPS Telecom RTUs and alarm management. NetGuardian RTUs aggregate alarms and status points (such as dry contacts), then forward those alarms so technicians can respond quickly. On the alarm management side, T/Mon collects, correlates, and presents alarms, and it can be extended with rule logic (including ASCII-based processing) to create derived alarms that add context beyond raw points.
After deploying T/Mon and NetGuardians, WRCTC gained reliable visibility and after-hours alerts. Kahler emphasized the reliability and longevity of the system, which reduces the need for troubleshooting and saves time: "Honestly, I spend about two hours a year working on the LNX which is good because there aren't five or six of me. It means it runs, and it has never broken down."
WRCTC also benefited from after-hours notification options that help a technician assess severity without driving in first: "What's been most beneficial is if we get alarms in the middle of the night, you can make that determination lying there, before you get up out of bed to head to the office in order to find out what's going on. So it's been extremely helpful in that respect."
"I've always had really good luck with tech support. And the nice thing is that whoever I'm talking to, if they don't know the answer, they will get it. It's always been really great."
As WRCTC modernized, DPS Telecom support helped Kahler keep the monitoring environment current. When WRCTC upgraded from T/Mon NOC to T/Mon LNX, DPS assisted with the database move: "I called tech support to help me get the database moved over from the T/Mon NOC to the LNX when we upgraded. That was pretty awesome. 20 minutes on the phone, and we were up and running."
For operators considering similar upgrades, this is a common pattern: a stable RTU layer at sites (NetGuardians collecting discrete alarms and other telemetry) paired with centralized alarm management (T/Mon) that can evolve as requirements move from simple notification to deeper diagnostics.
WRCTC wants to expand from summary alarming to more detailed alarm information and derived intelligence. Kahler described several practical items the team wants to monitor more directly and consistently:
"There are a few, basic things we want to monitor, whether the cabinets have commercial power, if the battery voltage in those cabinets is getting low, or if it just completely shuts off."
These are high-value signals for any remote telecom cabinet. Knowing that a cabinet is on battery, knowing that battery voltage is dropping, and knowing when a cabinet is fully offline can change the response plan immediately. WRCTC also wants the network to indicate when a site has become unreachable, instead of relying on manual checks: an adjoining node notifying the team that visibility was lost for a specific cabinet.
NetGuardian RTUs are often used for this kind of cabinet-level alarming because they can bring multiple signal types into a consistent alarm stream. When integrated with T/Mon, teams can normalize alarms across mixed vendor gear, consolidate alerting, and then apply rule logic to reduce guesswork at 2:00 a.m.
WRCTC looked for ways to get more value from the monitoring infrastructure already in place. Kahler explained that DPS worked with him to create ASCII rules that improved understanding of cabinet power status, reducing the need to log in to individual devices just to determine which locations were without power: "A couple years ago, I spent time on the phone with one of the guys here and using ASCII, we built a couple rules that allows us to know which cabinets in that particular network are without power so we don't have to login to the equipment."
Over time, the need expanded across multiple networks: "Then time got away and I've got 7 other networks I have to build these for, and I've totally forgotten how we built them. That was one of the reasons I wanted to come out here for the ASCII course."
In practical terms, ASCII-based rules and derived alarm logic can help an alarm management system turn raw event streams into technician-ready notifications, such as grouping related events, labeling alarms by cabinet or network segment, and generating alarms that reflect operational conditions (for example, identifying which cabinets are without commercial power during a storm).
WRCTC sent Kahler to DPS Factory Training to deepen his understanding of the monitoring tools they already operate and to evaluate what to expand next. As he described it: "The limitations of what I had known before I got here were the scenarios in which we have deployed the alarm monitoring."
Kahler also wanted to explore SNMP as a potential method for gaining more detailed alarms and status beyond discrete points: "As far as SNMP goes, I've never worked with it and I don't really know anything about it. The reason I wanted to come out for the SNMP training was just to take it in, and see if it's something we really want to deploy and utilize in our network."
Factory Training gave Kahler new perspective on expanding monitoring depth and creating more automation around loss of visibility: "It's going to become more beneficial to us once we get some of these derived alarms going. In the instances where maybe your IP connection to a site goes down, we don't have anything automated to tell us we lost visibility of a site. So now I can go back, sit down and look at our network and what we are monitoring, and decide if we want to deploy the SNMP or the ASCII a little bit farther in detail."
In addition to improving alarm detail through SNMP or ASCII, WRCTC is evaluating additional projects to increase site security and visibility.
First, WRCTC is interested in increasing site visibility and security through IP camera monitoring. Kahler described an interest in video that could be triggered by access events or repeated failed attempts: "We are looking at possibly deploying some form of video surveillance. It would kick on if a door was opened, or there are too many failed attempts to open a door, regardless of whether it's a person that's supposed to be in there or not."
Second, WRCTC is working around the realities of aging security infrastructure. At headquarters, a legacy building access control system has become difficult to maintain: "At our headquarters building, we have a legacy Building Access Control System that we can't find parts for anymore. We've looked at replacement through the existing vendor and it's pretty expensive."
To preserve existing door hardware and wiring where possible, Kahler contacted DPS for a solution that could work within their current infrastructure. As he summarized the current setup: "All the strikes are in the door, all the sensors are in the door, all the card readers are already there, and everything wires back to one central closet."
He then reached out to DPS for a path forward: "I called Mark at DPS 4 or 5 months ago, just to see if there's a solution available, and he's confident there is one. He's planning a custom device that will allow us to not to have to use all the different ECUs back at our Headquarters."
Based on WRCTC's experience operating DPS Telecom monitoring since 2004, the organization reports several practical outcomes:
Summary alarms typically indicate a high-level state (critical/major/minor) without identifying the exact cause or affected sub-system. Detailed alarms provide more specific information (for example, commercial power failed versus battery low), which speeds troubleshooting and improves dispatch decisions.
NetGuardian RTUs can bring cabinet signals (such as dry contacts and other telemetry supported by the deployment) into a single alarm reporting path. This simplifies monitoring across many remote locations and provides consistent alerting to a central system like T/Mon.
ASCII rule processing can be used to interpret incoming text or event patterns and generate derived alarms that are easier for operators to act on. In WRCTC's case, ASCII-based rules were used to identify which cabinets were without power without logging into each device.
If an IP connection to a remote site goes down, you may stop receiving alarms, which can hide critical conditions. Alarming on loss of visibility helps ensure communications failures are treated as actionable events, not silent gaps.
Discrete points are ideal for simple on/off conditions. SNMP can provide richer status and performance information from compatible devices. Many teams start with discrete alarming for critical conditions and add SNMP where additional detail or remote diagnostics is needed.
If you are standardizing remote-site alarming, improving cabinet-level power and battery visibility, or planning an upgrade from summary alarms to detailed derived alarms, DPS Telecom can help you design a practical path forward with NetGuardian RTUs and T/Mon alarm management.
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