The Challenge

Douglas County's Emergency Communications department provides 911 telephone services for the entire county, radio dispatching personnel and equipment for the roughly 300 officers across 23 law enforcement, fire, and medical response agencies serving the cities, townships, and rural areas of Douglas County, Kansas.

For years, that network ran on an aging UPS fleet built around lead-acid battery banks, ten batteries per bank, four to six banks per module, and four power supplies per unit. Unlike the ZPM that replaced it, that older UPS technology wasn't a power intelligence system. It offered backup capacity with no way to see a failure coming, and when parts or batteries wore out, replacements were slow to source, and the batteries themselves were heavy to handle.

One of the county's tower sites in particular was known for losing power whenever the wind picked up, a routine occurrence in Kansas. When it went down, the county lost radio connectivity for its officers, and there was no way to tell over the phone whether an alarm meant a real outage or a nuisance trip. More than once, that meant someone driving out to the site at 3 a.m. to find out it wasn't an emergency at all.

"I don't have to worry about that tower anymore. I haven't had to look at it in six months, and that's the biggest compliment I can give this system."

Tony Foster, Director, Douglas County Emergency Communications

The Solution

Douglas County did what many public safety agencies do before a change this consequential: it looked for a proven reference. A nearby state transportation agency had recently deployed the ZPM and had no reservations about recommending it, which gave the county's small radio shop, effectively one technician and its IT lead, enough confidence to reach out to Evoltix directly.

That first real conversation happened almost by accident: at a trade show in Anaheim, California, the team discovered that Evoltix's regional contact lives about 45 minutes from Douglas County's own offices. Visits to the manufacturing facility followed, where the team watched their units being built. Knowing the ZPM was designed and built close to home mattered concretely, not just as a nice-to-have; it meant that if something needed attention, help wasn't an ocean away.

That local connection was a nice bonus for Douglas County, but it's not what makes the model work everywhere else. Evoltix's field services team installs and commissions ZPM systems for customers coast to coast, and it shows up the same way for a five-tower county radio shop as it does for a state agency or a national carrier.

From first conversation to fully operational, the deployment took roughly six to eight weeks. Douglas County deliberately timed it to finish before winter, when Kansas weather is hardest on tower equipment, and outages are most likely. Because this was the county's first time commissioning equipment like the ZPM, Evoltix's team worked through the process with them directly, including on-site visits, rather than leaving them to figure it out over a support line.

Results and Impact

  • The tower that once needed constant attention hasn't required a manual check in six months, freeing the county's radio technician to focus on other priorities.
  • All four Douglas County-owned tower sites are now running on the ZPM, replacing the county's aging UPS fleet ahead of winter.
  • Radio connectivity for the county's officers no longer depends on equipment the team had stopped trusting.
  • Hands-on commissioning support from Evoltix, described by the county as being able to "call as many times as you need," turned an unfamiliar process into a manageable one for a small in-house radio shop.

Why It Matters

For a county radio shop without a dedicated project management team, the deciding factor in a change like this often isn't the spec sheet. It's whether the vendor shows up when something is unfamiliar, and whether the county has to relearn how to manage a piece of equipment every time something goes wrong. Douglas County's experience shows that reliable power is only half the story. The other half is a tower the team can stop thinking about entirely, and a vendor that treats a small county's radio shop the same way it would treat a state agency.

"I've bought a lot of expensive things from big companies, and most of the time you walk away frustrated. That wasn't the case here. Call as many times as you need, and someone actually comes out to help."

Tony Foster, Director, Douglas County Emergency Communications