Category: News

ARVADA – High Country Wire and Telephone announced today that it has completed a Nortel VoIP solution for Foothills Bank.

The solution is comprised of a central Nortel BCM 400 at their main location and Nortel Contivity routers and Nortel i2004 IP phones at their two other metro Denver branch locations. The solution makes optimum use of the bank’s Qwest point-to-point T1s since it now maximizes the bandwidth of each circuit and provides for network redundancy in the event one of the circuits were to fail. The diagram below is a schematic of the deployed solution.

The bank’s voice mail is now centrally located and managed by an easy-to-use browser interface and all the bank extensions are managed either by a traditional phone console or by a Nortel BCM compatible PC Console product by Convertec Inc. “The PC Console product is very useful because it provides more than just basic information about who is on their phone. We can now optimize incoming calls from our customers.”, states bank technology manager Cheryl Spirek.

Several traditional and VoIP solutions were considered by Foothills Bank as a part of their decision-making process. After considering Inter-Tel, Avaya, and Nortel it was the Nortel BCM 400 VoIP solution was chosen based on price and functionality. “The BCM 400 VoIP solution was nearly $5,000 cheaper in total cost than a similar traditional phone system solution.”, states Cheryl Spirek. “We have been very impressed with the sound quality of the Nortel i2004 and i2002 phones and the redundancy features of the network. We performed a test of the network redundancy and didn’t notice anything when simulated a network failure by disconnecting one of the T1’s.”

The deployment was managed by two of HCWT’s principals, Dan and Jim Whitfield, and was deployed in partnership with John Schwartz of Arvada’s CEWinc.

Hi Country Wire and Telephone is a supplier of business phone systems, phone service, voice mail, and internet access. Hi Country, owned by Robert Whitfield Sr., is currently servicing numerous financial institutions, federal and local government agencies along with government contractors and businesses of all sizes. More information on Hi Country Wire and Telephone can be obtained at www.hcwt.com . More about Foothills Bank can be obtained at www.foothillsbank.com

ARVADA – High Country Wire and Telephone is nearing its tenth year as the exclusive phone vendor of choice for McCaddon Cadillac Buick GMC Truck in Boulder.

After doing some introductory service for McCaddon in the mid-1990’s, as their new phone vendor Hi Country installed a new Nortel Norstar Modular Integrated Communications System (MICS) for McCaddon in 1997 along with Qwest Centrex 21 services.

Owner Mark McCaddon states the following about Hi Country, “They have been a very reliable service provider over the past decade. They understand how important phone service is to our automotive business. When they installed our phone system in the 1997 we tried a new configuration to handle incoming calls. It didn’t work. The great thing was Hi Country came back in, swapped our phone sets out, and put us back into a configuration that worked better for us without any hassles”.

In addition to the deployment of the Nortel phone systems, Hi Country performed a thorough network audit of McCaddons network and voice services. “We wanted to see if we could improve our internet connectivity without breaking the bank!”, stated Mark McCaddon. “Hi Country was able to recommend service by both Cbeyond and Qwest which functioned seamlessly together as if they were one provider and saved us $500 a month, which is a big savings for our business and doubled our internet capacity.”

McCaddon Motors is not the only Colorado or USA-based automotive dealership that Hi Country services. Prior to the year 2000 Hi Country installed over 20 new Avaya and Nortel PBX phone systems for local and national Autonation dealerships. In addition to the local John Elway Autonation sites, Hi Country is the vendor of choice for Fisher Chevrolet of Boulder and Peak Nissan. As an expert phone vendor, Hi Country has also helped these dealerships save tremendous sums of money on their network services by proactively notifying them of potential savings. They, in turn, can pass the savings on to their customers.

Hi Country Wire and Telephone is a supplier of business phone systems, phone service, voice mail, and internet access. High Country, owned by Robert Whitfield Sr., is currently servicing numerous automotive dealerships, federal and local government agencies along with government contractors and businesses of all sizes. More information on Hi Country Wire and Telephone can be obtained at www.hcwt.com. More about McCaddon Cadillac Buick GMC can be obtained atwww.mccaddon.com.