Challenge

With almost a thousand students utilizing the seven buildings spread out across its beautiful Bartow County, Georgia campus, Adairsville High School relies heavily on its paging and bell schedule system to keep everything running smoothly. But whenever there’s a thunderstorm, the administration has had to keep one eye on the sky for lightning because a single strike – even several miles away – would often disrupt communications by using the underground copper wiring as a conductor, shorting out various components and shutting down critical pages and bell schedules. 

The problem stemmed from the original installation. When underground cabling was installed that was not rated for underground or wet condition use, it quickly began to deteriorate to the point where system failures happened routinely. Numerous false call-ins from one remote building were so frequent the paging system had to be disconnected. The situation grew so bad that the county was soliciting quotes to have almost 30 thousand feet of underground cabling replaced with properly rated cabling for all their low voltage systems.

• Stop ongoing lightning-related paging system disruptions 
• Eliminate expensive replacement of damaged wiring 
• Add flexibility and scalability to school and district telecom system