Case Study: Columbia College achieves quick, reliable, campus-wide notification with Singlewire Software's InformaCast

Quick, Reliable, and Efficient Campus-Wide Notification

Columbia College, a small higher-education campus in Sonora, CA (part of the Yosemite Community College District) serving about 2,000 students and 100 faculty, faced an urgent communications problem: an aging paging system that could only notify 24 phones at a time across roughly 300 phones spread over 20 buildings. That limitation made it slow and impractical to rapidly alert students and staff about snow closures, power outages, and other emergencies.

The college implemented Singlewire’s InformaCast to replace the old system, enabling one-click broadcasts to all campus phones and overhead IP speakers simultaneously and to other endpoints (email, SMS, social feeds). Administrators use phone-based or web interfaces and prerecorded “canned” messages for fast, consistent alerts; UPS-backed network equipment preserves phone service during power loss. The result: faster, reliable, and customizable campus-wide notifications, strong vendor support, and a clear, cost-effective return on investment.

Columbia College

Fred Grolle

Network technician