Upgrades Phone System

Farm Supply Warehouse Gets Super Long-Range Phone System for Five SoCal Locations - Southern California

DuraFon-SIP: Well-established farm supply company serving Southern California upgrades phone system for its large footprint properties.

In 1950, Farm Supply started as a small store selling fertilizer and post-war surplus equipment. Fifteen years later, Farm Supply purchased Walty Pump Company and established its pump department, which became a vital part of their service line. Today, Farm Supply has twelve pump technicians and a fleet of five state-of-the-art pump trucks, providing service 24-hours a day, seven days a week.

From 2004 to 2011, Farm Supply expanded to five multi-acre locations in Southern California—San Luis Obispo, Paso Robles, Arroyo Grande, Santa Maria, and Buellton.



The Need

While their previous phone system was in fairly good shape, Farm Supply needed EnGenius long range phones because their stores are similar to farms and lumberyards with a massive footprint of approximately 5-10 acres per property. So, Tim Lemons of Farm Supply called Frank Randise, unified communications manager of Astound Business Solutions (Powered by Digital West) to request a phone system upgrade on its properties.

Randise’s division is a competitive local exchange carrier (CLEC) that provides voice and data services via copper or fiber. “We used to resell PBX systems but dominantly focus on hosted SIP for voice now,” he said. After surveying the properties, the installation team decided to upgrade all sites to fiber and run their hosted system in tandem with Farm Supply’s existing system until the changeover was complete.


“They were quite shocked at the range of the cordless phones.”

Frank Randise

Unified Communications Manager, Astound Business Solutions



The Solution

To begin, Astound Business Solutions installed Juniper Networks SRX gateways over fiber at all locations. One port was configured for direct internet access, one for hosted, and another for multiprotocol label switching (MPLS) between stores. They also installed a managed Cisco router with Cisco PoE switches and connected their hosted SIP phones to their MetaSwitch platform, which allows users to merge their traditional telephone lines—even old-school copper lines—with digital services.

Lastly, each location was outfitted with one DuraFon-SIP base unit and several handsets ranging from three to six units at each site.

The DuraFon SIP was made for challenging deployments like Farm Supply’s massive properties. The ruggedized handsets can withstand rough handling and extreme temperatures, while the base supports up to ten handsets, ten SIP accounts, and four concurrent calls. With a range of 3000 acres, DuraFon-SIP was plenty adequate for Farm Supply.







The Result

The install went smoothly at all locations with very little trouble. “We experienced no network trouble prior to the upgrade,” said Randise. “There was a little network trouble afterwards, but that was related only to the router on the fiber network.”

Tim Lemons and Farm Supply were very happy with the Astound Business Solutions hosted product. And the DuraFon SIP phones were exceptional. “They were quite shocked at the range of the cordless phones,” said Randise.

Many customers are. EnGenius is the leading manufacturer of long-range industrial voice communications. We invite you to contact us today and let us know how we can meet your long-range phone system needs across any sized property.

Learn more about EnGenius Phone Solutions





See all Case Studies