United Telephone/Turtle Mountain Communications provide telecommunications service to 12,495 access lines in northeastern North Dakota.

Langdon serves as the host switch site currently using an Ericsson AXE digital switch at software level 308. It routes traffic to two (2) LATA's, the Fargo-Brainard LATA (636) and the Bismarck LATA (638) and provides switching for the following 701 NXX remotes.

The Ericsson switch allows us to offer a wide variety of calling features along with CLASS features.

We also utilize Signaling System 7 (SS7) which puts the information required to set up and manage telephone calls in a separate network rather than within the same network that the telephone call is being made on. By doing this, it allows more efficiency of the network.

Our network is also a Synchronous Optical Network (SONET) at an optical carrier level of 12(OC-12 level) or 622.08 MBPS. We are currently unfolding our ring in order to have alternate routes in the event of a fiber cut in order to provide uninterrupted service.

The above system utilizes a fiber optic network consisting of 296 miles of fiber optic cable in sizes from 12 fiber to 36 fiber and we use copper facilities for distribution plant. We also use Fujitsu factor equipment on our distribution plant to gain cable pairs and to allow us to offer T-1 service to our subscribers on copper facilities and upto an OC-3 on fiber facilities.

We also utilize Tellabs digital cross connects systems (DACS) at the following offices allowing us more efficient use of digital facilities, and reduce the equipment and maintenance cost associated with traditional means of cross-connection and test access. This is accomplished by allowing us to electronically rearrange channels within transmission facilities and replace back to back channel banks, multiplexers, DSX panels, external bridging equipment and associated wiring and terminations.

• Langdon Tellabs 5300 equipped with 64 ports
• Bottineau Tellabs 5300 equipped with 32 ports
• Rolla Tellabs 5300 equipped with 32 ports

We also offer the following wide variety of data transmission mediums for our customer to chose from meet their needs.

Frame relay is designed for cost efficient data transmission for intermittent traffic between local area networks and between endpoints in a wide area network. Frame relay puts data in a variable-size unit called a frame. Frame relay is provided at 56k up to T-1 speeds.

Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) is a set of standards for digital transmission over ordinary telephone copper wire as well as over other media. Home and business users who utilize IDSN in place of modems can see highly graphic web pages arriving very quickly up to 128kbps. We offer two levels of service Basic Rate Interface (BRI), for the home and small business and Primary Rate Interface (PRI) for the larger end user.

We are also an Internet Service Provider (ISP) using two servers with the main server being a dual processor Pentium III server with 512M system RAM and 45 Gigs of RAID 5 high-performance storage subsystem. Running Linux operating systems allows us to provide our customers e-mail, client authentication, Internet accounting, web hosting and DNS. We also use a secondary server, which is a single processor Pentium pro, 128M system RAM, 16 Gigs of high-performance SCS12 Disk subsystem and a Linux operating system which provides a bastion firewall service for DSL and other subscribers.

For our backbone facilities, we use a dual homed Cisco 3640 router connected to dual fractional DS3s and dual T-1 backbone connections with a carrying capacity of 13 MBPS.

We offer the following variety of subscriber connection mediums to our Internet subscribers.

• Dial in facilities are Lucent Technologies MAX TNT with 192 v.90 capable digital modems. 192 telephone lines are aggregated into quad-T1s connected to the digital modems.
• Dual 3com netbuilder II router provides lease connections to the end users.
• Frame Relay is provided on a fractional or full T-1.
• Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) brings high-bandwidth information to homes and small business over ordinary copper telephone lines.

In the very near future we will be offering Phone Doubler as an IP Telephony solution that enables you to have simultaneous access to the Internet and near wireline voice communication over a single phone line. Until now Internet users have had only two choices: put up with missed phone calls while online or invest in a second phone line or ISDN connection. Phone Doubler solves this problem and ends the frustration for both Internet users and service providers while adding functionality to the standard business desktop. Now users will be able make or receive phone calls over the Internet without degrading or canceling their Internet session.

And in the future for companies utilizing web pages, we will have a product called Phone Doubler Quick Call (PDQC) which is an IP telephony product that allows Internet users to click on a Web site icon and immediately call a customer service, sales or technical support representative via their computer, without needing an additional phone line. PDQC allows call centers and e-commerce providers to receive calls directly from the Internet without replacing their current telephone system. The product works with any telephone system, PBX. PDQC also integrates Web-based customer service with call centers, enhancing online customer service with the option of simultaneous personal assistance.

We also provide an in-house service support center for our users.

We look forward to bringing state of the art technology to our valued subscribers of rural North Dakota.

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