Burlington Telecom Looks to Asentria for Custom Integrated Monitoring Capabilities

As a provider of cable television, telephone, and high-speed Internet for the City of Burlington, Vermont, Burlington Telecom (BT) offers communication services to more than 16,000 homes. By the end of 2008, BT’s communications infrastructure will allow every home and business in the city to have access to its fiber optic network.

Moreover, the telecommunications infrastructure will enable BT to carry virtually unlimited amounts of traffic and services. As such, this network will be the “electronic public road” system of the future, capable of delivering all the services that are rapidly appearing and which will be essential to communities in the coming decades. The Need to Respond Faster

Like any telecom company, however, BT has had its share of outages and system failures. Historically, BT relied heavily on customer communication to understand when and where there were problems with its network. Yet, even while customers were calling, BT had no standard way of diagnosing the issues at hand, and for BT, that wasn’t an acceptable situation.

With no alarm collection capabilities and no situational awareness of remote sites, BT needed to find a better way to proactively monitor its remote equipment and respond in a timely manner to network outages. However, the company had difficulty finding a solution that would fit its specific needs. Furthermore, existing solutions were too expensive, requiring costly labor and installation.

Instant Awareness
That’s when BT decided to take matters into its own hands and find a solution. In the summer of 2005, BT began to search for a remote site monitoring solution and was introduced to Asentria (formerly Omnitronix), which offered BT open surveillance of its network with a customized offering.

“Asentria built us a custom system based on our specific needs and requirements,” said Jim Wemette, Manager of Systems Engineer at BT. “And they did it at such a great price! We would never have been able to find that anywhere else.”

Asentria designed a system for BT that gave them the ability to proactively track and monitor issues with its fiber optic network without having to wait for a customer to call to report an issue. Using the Asentria SNMP-Link SL81 Remote Site Manager, BT found a way to avoid costly facility downtime by integrating monitoring capabilities into its own network management system.

“Through the use of the SL81, we can now remotely survey our entire network, including our security, power and alarm equipment,” said Wemette. “Their products are seamlessly integrated into our network, and help us avoid expensive labor and installation costs.”

The SL81 also allows BT to have an ongoing situational awareness of the fiber aggregation huts on its network. “The second a fuse blows, a T1 goes down, or someone even opens a door, we know about it,” said Wemette. “We are now able to respond to those issues within a matter of seconds.”

BT even has a live look into the environmental conditions of its network. Through the use of the Asentria CCU-64, a peripheral sensing module that expands the capabilities of the SL81, the operations staff can detect high-humidity and high or low temperatures in remote or unmanned equipment rooms. When combined with the communications capabilities of the SL81, the CCU incorporates non-networked devices into BT’s network management system.

“The Asentria devices are unfailing,” said Wemette. “Instead of being reactive to customer calls, we’re proactively fixing issues before most customers even recognize there is an issue.”

Customer Loyalty Creates Business Continuity
But, BT says, perhaps the greatest benefit of the new system has been to BT’s customers. The reduction of downtime to the network has led to increased customer satisfaction and retention, greater operational efficiency, and reduced labor costs for the company.

“It’s rare for us to receive a phone call from a customer who has noticed an issue on the network before we have,” said Wemette. “That translates into customer loyalty, which keeps us in business.”

The Company
Asentria develops remote site monitoring and telemanagement solutions that enable providers of critical communications infrastructure to more efficiently and reliably run their networks. Asentria’s products help ensure quality of service and lower operational costs, while making it easier to provision, maintain and support remote equipment.