How Teltrac Transformed Connectivity at Awaroa Lodge

The Challenge

Awaroa Lodge, a remote property on the Abel Tasman walking track, was hampered by poor guest Wi‑Fi. Also aging phone systems and operational pain from a dispersed site with no cell coverage. The incoming internet link was adequate, distributing that bandwidth across buildings set among dense native bush. With little or no line‑of‑sight between structures it meant guests were often limited to around 1 Mbps. The lodge’s footprint includes the main admin/restaurant building, four accommodation blocks. In addition, staff quarters 400 m away, a beach house 400 m in another direction and a pizzeria about 300 m from the main building. The pizzeria required reliable connectivity for tills, EFTPOS, CCTV, phones and guest Wi‑Fi. While in‑room phones remained essential where mobile reception was non-existent.

“Guests were barely getting a megabit of speed,” says Julz Glass of Awaroa Lodge. The incoming internet connection itself was adequate. But the greater problem was reticulating that service across a dispersed site with dense native bush and virtually no line‑of‑sight for point‑to‑point wireless links. Buildings include the main admin block and restaurant, four accommodation blocks. Also staff quarters 400 meters away, a beach house 400 meters in a different direction, and a pizzeria about 300 meters from the main building. The pizzeria needed connectivity for tills, EFTPOS, CCTV, staff phones and guest Wi‑Fi — and with no cell coverage across the site, internal phones were still critical.

The Solution

Teltrac expanded an initial PABX replacement brief into a full site communications overhaul that reused existing infrastructure where practical and introduced modern networking and remote management tools. Key elements of the delivered solution included:

• Replaced the legacy PABX with an on‑premises IPECS UCP100 system and upgraded all room handsets to IP phones.
• Used existing copper telephone pairs to deliver VDSL to outlying buildings, boosting available speeds from ~1–2 Mbps to up to 100 Mbps.
• Ran fibre between the main admin building and the largest 12‑room accommodation block (linked by a wooden walkway) and re‑cabled those rooms with Cat6 to provide a gigabit backbone for that block.
• Re‑terminated and upgraded in‑room cabling (Cat5e) where required, deployed PoE switches and mounted access points discreetly above old phone jack locations; PoE also powers the new IP phones.
• Installed high‑power access points for staff accommodation and an outdoor AP at the pizzeria to serve day visitors and water taxi passengers.
• Standardised on Grandstream hardware across routing, PoE switching and Wi‑Fi, and used Grandstream’s cloud portal for remote monitoring, firmware management and configuration.
• Integrated the commercial Starlink service as the site internet feed, with Teltrac’s router creating a VLAN that distributes the Starlink feed to VDSL modems, the fibre link and the main switch.

Why this solution

IPECS UCP100 on‑premises PBX — Delivers reliable internal telephony with local call control even when external connectivity is disrupted.

Grandstream router and PoE switches — A cost‑effective, robust platform that provides power and data to APs and IP phones while supporting VLAN segmentation.

VDSL over existing copper — Rapidly increases bandwidth to remote buildings without new trenching, conserving budget and time.

Fibre backbone to the largest block — Future‑proofs the busiest accommodation block with full gigabit capacity for guests and internal services.

High‑power indoor/outdoor access points — Ensures strong coverage across dispersed buildings and outdoor visitor areas like the pizzeria and water taxi landing.

Grandstream cloud management — Enables remote firmware updates, configuration and troubleshooting from Nelson, avoiding lengthy physical service trips. It’s a one‑hour drive from Nelson to Kaiteriteri, followed by a 1.5‑hour boat trip in on the sea shuttle — and the same to get out. So it’s incredibly convenient for the client to know we can maintain and update the system remotely from Nelson.

Starlink integration via VLAN — Provides a resilient internet feed that’s distributed securely across site subnets for guest, staff and POS systems

Installation

Teltrac executed the upgrade with minimal disruption and an emphasis on reusing existing cabling where sensible:

• Carried out a detailed site survey and sequence plan to prioritise high‑impact upgrades.
• Upgraded the PABX to the IPECS UCP100 and replaced room handsets with IP phones.
• Terminated and tested copper pairs for VDSL modems to feed outlying buildings.
• Ran a new fibre link between the main building and the largest accommodation block, and installed Cat6 cabling to each room in that block.
• Re‑terminated in‑room Cat5e cabling, installed PoE switches in distribution points and mounted access points above previous phone jack locations for a tidy finish.
• Deployed outdoor and high‑power APs to cover the pizzeria, staff housing and public access points.
• Integrated Starlink as the primary internet feed and configured VLANs to segregate guest, staff, admin and POS traffic.
• Configured multiple SSIDs and captive portal/voucher workflows, set up user accounts, schedules and quality‑of‑service rules, and validated EFTPOS and CCTV connectivity at the pizzeria.
• Completed system commissioning, staff training and handed over remote management access via the Grandstream cloud portal.