NAME: ALLEN WETHERELT

TITLE: CENTRAL OFFICE SUPERVISOR

COMPANY: RANGE TELECOM COOPERATIVE

PROJECT: EXTEND A DS-3 TO A CASINO 3000 FEET AWAY WITHOUT USING FIBER

Plant Stats: ILEC territory covers more than 250 square miles of mountain plains across southeastern Montana and northeastern Wyoming. Range serves more than 6000 subscribers through 18 telephone exchanges. Established in 1953 as a non-profit cooperative, the co-op, along with its subsidiaries Advanced Communications Technology, RT Communications and Dubois Telephone Exchange, serves six Montana counties: Big Horn, Carter, Custer, Powder River, Rosebud and Treasure. It also serves five counties in Wyoming: Campbell, Crook, Johnson, Sheridan and Weston.

Other vital information: Approximately 45 employees. Facing terrain and distance problems, as well as frozen earth, Range Telephone needed to provide a casino customer with 45 Mb/s of bandwidth and couldn't wait for the spring thaw.

What options did you consider?

Fiber, but that was too expensive. We also use terrestrial radio, but in this case, it really wasn't an option. There was a fairly significant hilltop in our way. We would have had to do a repeatered radio [configuration], which would have added to the cost. We already had a 56K circuit and could have taken a T-1 out there, but not a DS-3. It wasn't a tremendous distance, but the normal specs for a T-3 are fairly low; you couldn't get much across using common technology at 100 feet, let alone the 3000 feet we had to go.

How did you solve the problem?

Pulsecom had a newly developed system [the DS-3 Express]. In fact, it just came off the test bench for deployment. It was [general availability] when we got it, but it had not been proven in a true field facility. They actually sent it to us to test to make sure it worked for our application. They were good about that. With Pulsecom, we were able to take a DS-3 right off our Sonet network and were able to fire up the DS-3 using our existing copper plant using four copper pairs to deliver the service.

Are there other places in your network you could use this technology?

I wouldn't say there are a lot of places we could use it, but as bandwidth needs push the limit for what you need to deliver to customers, it could be very useful. For years, our customers got by with 56K circuits, but now it's getting to the point where a T-3 is normal. And this was very cost effective. It's a very good application to help some business customers that have a main headquarters with other locations a half-mile away. And we have some of those businesses.

Will you eventually run the fiber?

We are in the process of that now. At the time we put in the DS-3, we thought it could be a permanent solution, but since then, the casino is looking to put more DS-3s in that location. Putting in the DS-3 meant we were able to wait until we had unfrozen ground to lay the fiber in.