Comporium Communications Maximizes Alarm Visibility with Industry-Leading Tech Support

The Comporium group of companies has provided communications services to customers in York and Lancaster counties for more than 100 years. The Comporium Group makes it easier for more than 95,000 residential and commercial customers to access a broad range of communication services, including local telephone, long distance, wireless, cable TV, Internet, security, data services, and directory publishing.

Tom Wells NOC Supervisor Comporium Communications

In addition to using IAM masters to monitor its own network, Comporium Communications also monitors another telco.

A Hardware Failure Threatened Mission-Critical Monitoring

The IAM is an industrial-grade master with high reliability, but any equipment can still fail. When Tom Wells and his team at Comporium recently experienced a hardware failure, they contacted DPS Tech Support.

"We contacted DPS Support and they checked a couple of things with us. Then they tried to dial-in," said Tom Wells, NOC Supervisor for Comporium. If an IAM experiences trouble, DPS techs can remotely connect to perform fixes. When a remote connection could not be established with Comporium's IAM, DPS Support determined that a hardware failure had occurred and sprung into immediate action.

An Advance Replacement Was Sent Across the Country in Less Than 24 Hours

To protect its monitoring, Comporium wisely invested in a Gold Plan when it purchased its IAMs. "We have a maintenance agreement with DPS, and they said they would send us a replacement," said Wells.

To make the transition to a replacement IAM as seamless as possible, DPS preinstalls existing client databases onto new hardware. "I emailed our database to DPS, and they installed it on another unit," Wells said. "That's something that's really good to be able to do. It didn't take a lot of time. We take database backups often, so we were able to send a current copy to DPS. That worked great."

After receiving Comporium's alarm database and installing it on a replacement IAM, DPS overnighted the replacement to Wells and his team. Senior DPS Support Engineer Chris Hower remembers that responding to Comporium was a top priority. "We knew we had to act fast," Hower said. "They need visibility both for their own network and for the other network they monitor. When you consider the total number of customers on those networks, that's literally thousands of people depending on us, so we got their database loaded up on a replacement IAM and got it out the door that afternoon."

Comporium received its replacement master less than 24 hours after calling for tech support. "We got the new unit the next day," said Wells. "We had already removed the old IAM, and when we powered up the new unit, it came right up."

Tech Support That Delivers When the Situation is Urgent

When calling DPS, clients are always greeted by a real person. This means that, when a client calls in with an urgent situation, the Tech Support team can launch into immediate action. "Every time that I've contacted DPS Tech Support, I've gotten really good results," said Wells. "The people I've talked to have been knowledgeable and willing to work with us. At times when we've had a pressing issue, DPS provided immediate help. The tech support I have dealt with over the years at DPS has impressed me."