Case Study: Teton Communications Standardizes on Exalt Radios for Voice and Data Services

For more than 40 years, Teton Communications, Inc. has been providing voice and data services along with radio systems consulting, system integration, installation and service to business customers in Eastern Idaho. The company’s wireless backbone network stretches across five counties from Pocatello in the south to Yellowstone Park in the north, providing critical two-way communications for municipal governments, public safety organizations, utility companies, wireless Internet providers and businesses. The company began by using 2 GHz analog microwave radio systems for its network, but has been relying for several years on reconditioned radios in the 6 GHz band. Today, an upgrade to new Exalt EX-i Series GigE radios has improved reliability and performance while reducing operating costs.
With a largely rural service area covering roughly 20,000 square miles, Teton Communications has always run a lean operation. For years, it has used reconditioned microwave radio systems in the 6 GHz licensed frequency band to span distances of 20 miles or more. The radios are housed in environmentally-controlled huts because of the area’s extremes of weather throughout the year.
As these older radios began reaching the end of their life, company president Tony Hafla began looking for alternatives. “We wanted to find a single vendor that we could count on to support all of our operations well into the future, so we evaluated all of the top manufacturers.” says Hafla.
The company’s team compared systems from Ceragon, Dragonwave, Exalt, Harris, Motorola, and Radwin among others, looking for the best combination of features, performance, flexibility, and price. Among the features required were simultaneous TDM and IP traffic support, remote management, and higher efficiency and reliability than their current systems. When all factors had been considered, Exalt was clearly the best choice.
“The Exalt radio systems stood out because they carried native TDM as well as native Ethernet,” says Hafla. “That was important to us because we have a wide variety of traffic to carry and sometimes we use as many as 12 T1 lines on a link.” Hafla’s team also liked Exalt’s unique 1.5+0 redundancy feature, which eliminated the extra cost of deploying redundant standby radios for each link.
Advanced Technology Slashes Operating Costs
After choosing Exalt as its supplier, Teton Communications bought half a dozen Exalt EX-6i-DS3-GigE radio systems and began deploying them in the summer of 2009. To reduce costs, most deployments used the existing radio antennas so that only the radio systems themselves needed to be changed. The change-out process took only a few hours per location.
One big surprise in the deployment process was the dramatic difference in the amount of space, power, and cooling needed by the Exalt radios as compared with the legacy radios. While the old radios required 9 vertical feet of rack space, the Exalt radios required only 2 feet. The older systems drew 16 amps of power, but the Exalt systems draw only 1-2 amps. “It was an incredible change in technology,” says Hafla.
Another savings comes from Exalt’s unique 1.5+0 redundancy technology, which maintains link operations even in the event of a transmitter failure. Rather than having to purchase two radios and keep one on standby at each end of every link, Teton Communications can purchase one Exalt radio per link endpoint and rely on it to keep operating even if there’s a critical component failure.
To date, the company’s staff has deployed the Exalt radio systems on four of the twelve links in its backbone network, spanning roughly 20 miles per link. Typically, the links are configured for 100 megabits per second (Mbps) Ethernet and up to 12 T1 lines, although Exalt’s capacity aggregation technology allows for system expansion up to full Gigabit Ethernet capacity.
A Reliable Technology Partner
“We have had an excellent experience with Exalt,” says Hafla. “The radios are far more reliable and much easier to troubleshoot, their technical support is outstanding, and we have a lot more flexibility for future growth.”
As a result, Teton Communications has standardized on Exalt microwave radio systems for its own network, and Exalt is also the first choice when the company recommends equipment for its customers. By replacing aging microwave radio systems with Exalt EX-6i-DS3-GigE radio systems, Teton Communications is running a more efficient and cost-effective operation while gaining the flexibility to expand capacity easily as its operation continues to grow.
Challenges
• Improve overall network reliability
• Minimize deployment costs
• Reduce operating expenses
• Ensure easy scalability for future growth
Solutions
• 1.5+0 semi-protected operation provides ideal protection-cost balance
• Indoor radio systems use existing antennas to reduce deployment time and costs
• High-efficiency solid state design reduces needed rack space from 9 feet to 2 feet, and reduce the radio system’s power needs from 16 amps to less than 2 amps
• Exalt capacity aggregation technology allows for system expansion up to Gigabit Ethernet speeds