The relationship that built ITG Group.
Bi-Mart Corporation wasn't looking for a new telecom partner in 2001 — they already had one. John Dowd had spent two decades as their carrier-side technician, pulling frame relay circuits through Oregon and Washington stores at Pacific Northwest Bell, US West, and Advanced Communication Technology. When John founded ITG Group from his home in Portland in January 2001, Bi-Mart became his first call. Not because he pitched them. Because they'd spent years watching him do the work right.
The carrier relationship was fragmented. Bi-Mart worked with multiple carriers across different regions, each managing their own billing and escalations. There was no single point of accountability. When something broke, IT staff spent hours on support calls that had nothing to do with building systems — they were managing carrier disputes, billing errors, and contract renewals.
Contracts auto-renewed across 40+ locations. Rates drifted incrementally higher as carriers raised prices each year, with no one systematically checking whether Bi-Mart was still competitive. The company had no visibility into whether they were paying market rates or if better options existed elsewhere. Competitive pressure that should have kept prices honest simply wasn't being applied.
From day one, ITG served as Bi-Mart's full outside telecom department — managing carrier relationships, auditing bills, renegotiating contracts, and coordinating network upgrades across a growing footprint of Oregon retail locations. As Bi-Mart's needs evolved from frame relay to MPLS to modern broadband infrastructure, ITG evolved with them: continuously sourcing competitive options, managing transitions without downtime, and ensuring the company never paid above-market rates for critical connectivity.
The institutional knowledge of Bi-Mart's network spans technology eras — frame relay to MPLS to fiber to SD-WAN. ITG has been through every major carrier consolidation, every network upgrade, every technical architecture shift. That continuity matters. When something changes, ITG already understands the history, the requirements, the quirks of Bi-Mart's operations. Time and money that would otherwise go into onboarding a new vendor gets redirected toward optimization.
Bi-Mart has been an ITG client for every year the company has existed. Through four decades of technology change, multiple carrier consolidations, and the complete transformation of enterprise networking, the relationship has endured because it was built on something that doesn't change: trust earned in the field, one cutover at a time. When John walks into a Bi-Mart store today, the people at the desk still know his name.
Having the same telecom partner for four decades of technology change means never starting from zero. ITG carries forward the playbook from one generation of technology to the next. Fiber buildout in the early 2000s, MPLS consolidation in the 2010s, SD-WAN implementation, cloud migration — each evolution started with a foundation of knowledge rather than a blank slate. That continuity is worth years of accumulated savings.
"John started helping us before there was even a company called ITG. When he started his own firm, the choice was obvious. Twenty-three years later, we don't see any reason to change that."
Send us your current telecom invoice. We'll tell you honestly what we see — no pitch, no pressure.
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