We become your team. ITG Group — independent telecom & IT advisory in Portland, Oregon. Carrier audits, contract negotiation, and managed carrier services since 2001.
Overpaying on contracts no one’s reviewed? Chasing carriers who won’t call back? ITG becomes your telecom department—auditing contracts, negotiating carriers, and managing everything on your behalf. Paid by the carriers, never by you.
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Four Decades of Trust in Pacific Northwest Telecom
Pacific Northwest Bell
John began his career right here in Oregon at Pacific Northwest Bell, learning the telecom industry from the ground up in the region he'd call home for life.

US West Transition
As the industry consolidated, John stayed rooted in the PNW — adapting to new systems while deepening the local relationships that would define his career.

Advanced Communication Technology
John partnered with ACT to pioneer performance technologies, building his reputation across the Pacific Northwest as someone who got results and kept his word.

ITG Group is Born
From his home in Portland, Oregon, John took the leap — founding ITG Group with his family and a simple promise: treat every client like a neighbor.

The Rest is History
Starting with Oregon-based BiMart Corporation, John proved that a PNW handshake still means something — 24 years and hundreds of clients later, that hasn't changed.

Telecom & IT Expertise That Fits Your Industry
Hospital & Healthcare
HIPAA-compliant voice, diverse-path connectivity for Epic and HL7 traffic, and clinic cutover windows scheduled around patient visits — never during them. BAAs on request, PHI-adjacent vendor management, and the same carrier-neutral advocacy that took Moda Health from legacy MPLS to Lumen NaaS without a missed appointment.
Retail & Multi-Location
John was pulling Frame Relay circuits for Bi-Mart years before ITG Group existed — a carrier-side field tech who earned the relationship one cutover at a time. When he founded ITG in 2001, Bi-Mart followed. Forty years and 79 stores later, the handshake has held through $2.1 million in documented savings and a Vendor of the Year award (one of only two ever in Bi-Mart's 62-year history).
Manufacturing & Distribution
Plants, warehouses, and showrooms stay in sync with diverse-carrier fiber, site-to-site failover, and UCaaS that survives the realities of shop-floor WiFi. Rodda Miller Paint moved 250+ users to modern voice with 30% lower per-user cost and zero production downtime. Azure Standard runs multi-carrier diversity from Dufur across Armstrong, AT&T, and Lumen.
Financial Services & Credit Unions
Branch connectivity with dual-carrier diversity, SD-WAN failover that doesn’t drop a transaction, and NCUA-aware vendor management for credit unions and regional banks. We’ve walked PNW financial institutions through PCI-touching network redesigns without a missed branch open. References in your footprint available under NDA.
Nonprofit & Public Service
Community Action migrated a 100-seat services call center to UCaaS + CCaaS during a 190-to-350 headcount surge — monthly spend came in below the old bill. Board-ready cost justification, competitive RFPs, and the advocacy that makes every grant dollar count.
Hospitality
Guest WiFi, property management integrations, and reliable voice across every property. ITG works with hotels and resorts to deliver seamless guest experiences backed by enterprise-grade connectivity.
Accounting
Secure file transfer, compliant communications, and reliable connectivity for firms handling sensitive financial data. ITG ensures your infrastructure meets the standards your clients expect.
Automotive
Dealership networks, service center connectivity, and multi-location voice systems — ITG manages telecom for automotive groups so every location stays connected and every call gets answered.
Events Services
Temporary high-bandwidth needs, venue connectivity, and scalable voice solutions. ITG provisions and manages the infrastructure that keeps events running smoothly behind the scenes.
Marketing & Advertising
Creative agencies need fast, reliable connectivity and collaboration tools that don't get in the way. ITG optimizes your stack so your team spends time on campaigns — not on hold with carriers.
Health & Wellness
Gyms, clinics, and wellness centers with multiple locations need simple, cost-effective telecom. ITG consolidates providers and negotiates rates that make sense for your footprint.
Management Consulting
Consulting firms live on communication. ITG ensures your voice, video, and collaboration platforms are best-in-class — sourced competitively and managed so you never think about them.
Education
From K-12 districts to higher ed, ITG manages E-Rate-eligible contracts, bandwidth upgrades, and campus-wide connectivity — delivering 60% more bandwidth at lower cost for schools across the PNW.
Telecom Savings & Results You Can Measure
Bi-Mart Corporation
Long before ITG Group existed, John was running frame relay installs for Bi-Mart as a field technician — pulling circuits, cutting over stores, and building a handshake relationship with Bi-Mart’s leadership that outlasted three carrier employers. When John founded ITG in 2001, Bi-Mart didn’t need to be sold on anything. They simply followed him.
The Beginning — Before ITG Existed
John started his telecom career at Pacific Northwest Bell in 1978 and spent the next two decades installing and managing circuits across Oregon and Washington — first at PNB, then at US West, then through his partnership with Advanced Communication Technology in the mid-’90s. Bi-Mart Corporation, headquartered in Eugene, was one of the retail accounts he served personally during those years. He ran their frame relay installs, walked the stores, and got to know the people who ran them. The relationship was built one cutover at a time, long before there was a company called ITG Group.
The Handshake That Moved With Him
When John founded ITG Group from his home in Portland in January 2001, he brought 23 years of carrier-side field experience with him — and a Rolodex of PNW business owners who trusted him personally. Bi-Mart became ITG’s first client in May 2001, not because John pitched them, but because they’d already spent years watching him do the work right. The same installer who had pulled their frame relay circuits in the ’80s and ’90s was now their outside telecom department.
The Challenge
With 79 retail locations spread across the Pacific Northwest, Bi-Mart’s telecom environment had grown into a patchwork of legacy circuits, carrier contracts, and billing inconsistencies. Internal staff lacked the bandwidth to audit every invoice or renegotiate terms across dozens of accounts — costs crept up year after year with no clear line of sight into what was actually being spent.
What ITG Did
ITG embedded as Bi-Mart’s outsourced telecom department. Starting with a full circuit and invoice audit across all 79 locations, the team identified redundant lines, billing errors, and contracts that had auto-renewed at above-market rates. ITG then ran competitive RFPs for replacement services, negotiated carrier agreements on Bi-Mart’s behalf, and managed every migration from scheduling through cutover. Through every technology shift — frame relay to MPLS, MPLS to SD-WAN, PRI to SIP — ITG has remained Bi-Mart’s single point of contact for telecom procurement, vendor management, and issue resolution.
The Outcome
Forty years of continuous service from the same person — 23 years on the carrier side, nineteen under the ITG banner. $2.1 million in documented savings. Vendor of the Year, one of only two vendors honored in Bi-Mart’s 62-year history. A telecom environment that’s fully inventoried, competitively priced, and managed end-to-end without adding a single headcount to Bi-Mart’s IT team.
Community Action
A rapidly growing nonprofit nearly doubled its workforce in a matter of weeks. ITG ran a full competitive RFP across multiple UCaaS and CCaaS providers at no cost — managing apples-to-apples pricing analysis and securing aggressive nonprofit discounts.
The Challenge
Community Action’s headcount surged from 190 to over 350 employees in response to expanded social service programs. Their existing phone system couldn’t scale, and the 100-seat call center — the primary lifeline for community members seeking assistance — was buckling under increased volume. They needed a modern unified communications platform fast, but as a nonprofit, every dollar had to be justified.
What ITG Did
ITG managed the entire evaluation process from requirements gathering through final contract execution. The team issued a competitive RFP to six UCaaS/CCaaS providers, built a side-by-side comparison matrix covering pricing, feature parity, scalability, and nonprofit discount eligibility, and presented a clear recommendation to leadership. ITG handled all vendor negotiations, ensuring Community Action received maximum nonprofit pricing concessions without sacrificing the feature set their call center required.
The Outcome
Community Action deployed a fully integrated UCaaS and CCaaS platform that scaled seamlessly with their growth. Monthly telecom costs came in thousands below their previous spend despite nearly doubling the user count. The call center gained modern queue management, real-time analytics, and reliable uptime — directly improving the community’s access to critical services.
Rodda Miller Paint
The Pacific Northwest’s largest family-owned paint manufacturer was locked into a communications contract that wasn’t delivering on its promises. ITG ran a competitive UCaaS evaluation and cut per-user costs by 30% across every location.
The Challenge
Rodda Miller Paint operates manufacturing plants, distribution warehouses, and retail showrooms across Oregon and Washington. Their incumbent provider had promised a seamless cloud migration but delivered dropped calls, unreliable service, and a billing structure that didn’t match the original quote. With 250+ users spread across multiple sites, the pain was compounding monthly — but breaking a multi-year contract felt equally daunting.
What ITG Did
ITG started with a full audit of Rodda’s existing telecom environment — mapping every user, device, and circuit across all locations. The team then ran a competitive evaluation across four UCaaS providers, building feature-by-feature and cost-per-user comparisons tailored to Rodda’s specific operational needs. ITG managed the contract exit strategy with the incumbent, negotiated favorable terms with the selected provider, and coordinated a phased migration that kept production facilities online throughout the transition.
The Outcome
Rodda Miller Paint moved to a modern UCaaS platform with 30% lower per-user costs, consistent call quality across all facilities, and a single monthly invoice replacing the patchwork of bills they’d been managing. The migration was completed with zero production downtime.
Best Western Premier Boulder Falls Inn
An aging phone system and unreliable internet were undermining the guest experience at this premier property. ITG bundled modern UCaaS with redundant SD-WAN connectivity, slashing monthly telecom costs by 45%.
The Challenge
Boulder Falls Inn is a premium Best Western property where guest satisfaction drives everything. But the property was running on a legacy PBX phone system with mounting maintenance costs and an internet connection that couldn’t reliably support modern guest expectations — streaming, conference calls, and mobile check-in all competed for the same limited bandwidth. Outages during peak occupancy weren’t just inconvenient; they translated directly into negative reviews and lost bookings.
What ITG Did
ITG assessed the property’s full connectivity and communications stack, then designed a bundled solution: a cloud-based UCaaS platform to replace the aging PBX, paired with a redundant SD-WAN configuration that bonded two independent internet circuits for automatic failover. ITG negotiated both the UCaaS and connectivity contracts as a package, leveraging combined spend to secure pricing the property couldn’t have achieved negotiating each service separately.
The Outcome
Monthly telecom spend dropped 45%. The property now operates on 99.9% uptime with automatic failover — guests and staff experience seamless connectivity even if a primary circuit goes down. Front desk operations, in-room services, and back-office communications all run on a single modern platform with one vendor relationship managed by ITG.
Jones & Roth CPAs
A respected multi-office CPA firm needed to modernize its communications infrastructure without disrupting client service — especially during tax season. ITG managed a phased rollout that cut monthly telecom spend by 35%.
The Challenge
Jones & Roth operates four offices across Oregon, each with its own phone system, internet provider, and billing arrangement. The lack of unified communications meant transferring calls between offices was clunky, shared voicemail and presence features didn’t exist, and the firm was paying four separate invoices at above-market rates. Leadership wanted to modernize but couldn’t risk any disruption to client-facing services during their busiest months.
What ITG Did
ITG began with a comprehensive telecom audit across all four locations, documenting every circuit, contract term, and monthly cost. The team then ran a competitive UCaaS evaluation focused on professional services requirements: client call quality, conference bridge reliability, mobile integration for CPAs working remotely during tax season, and seamless inter-office transfers. ITG designed a phased migration plan that rolled out one office at a time during lower-volume periods, with each cutover completed over a weekend to minimize disruption.
The Outcome
All four offices now operate on a unified cloud platform with shared directories, presence, and seamless call routing. Monthly telecom costs dropped 35% through carrier consolidation and competitive negotiation. The phased rollout was completed without a single client-facing disruption — most clients never knew the switch happened.
Metropolitan Pediatrics
A growing multi-site pediatric practice needed a communications solution that met HIPAA requirements without the carrier runaround. ITG cut monthly telecom costs by 20% and delivered the kind of after-hours support healthcare operations actually need.
The Challenge
Metropolitan Pediatrics LLC was managing a growing patient communications load across multiple clinic locations, with a legacy phone system that hadn’t kept pace with expansion. Carriers were slow to respond to issues, contracts hadn’t been reviewed in years, and the practice had no single point of contact when something went wrong — critical in a healthcare environment where downtime affects patient care scheduling.
What ITG Did
ITG audited every line, circuit, and service agreement across all locations — identifying billing errors and unused services that were quietly inflating the monthly bill. The team ran a competitive UCaaS evaluation focused on healthcare-specific requirements: HIPAA-compliant call recording, BAA availability, clinical-grade reliability SLAs, and integration with the practice’s scheduling workflows. ITG negotiated a unified solution and managed full implementation across every site, with a dedicated escalation path for after-hours issues.
The Outcome
Monthly telecom spend dropped 20% through billing corrections and competitive renegotiation. When a network outage hit on a Saturday evening at 10:15pm, ITG had it resolved before midnight — the kind of response a carrier’s 1-800 number simply doesn’t provide. Larry Norby, the practice’s Network Architect, put it plainly: “I would recommend itg Group to every company wanting to take a serious look at their Communications needs.”
Azure Standard
Rapid growth across multiple distribution facilities outpaced the network infrastructure supporting them. ITG consolidated to a single fiber provider and tripled bandwidth at every site — for less than the previous monthly cost.
The Challenge
Azure Standard is one of the largest independent natural and organic food distributors in the country, operating distribution hubs, cold storage facilities, and processing centers across rural Oregon. As the company expanded, each new facility had been provisioned with whatever internet service was locally available — resulting in a mix of DSL, cable, and legacy T1 circuits from different carriers. Bandwidth bottlenecks were slowing warehouse management systems, VoIP quality was unreliable, and there was no centralized visibility into what the company was spending across all sites.
What ITG Did
ITG conducted a full infrastructure audit across all six facilities, documenting existing circuits, contract terms, actual throughput versus advertised speeds, and monthly costs. The team identified that fiber service was available at every location but had never been explored because each site had been provisioned independently. ITG negotiated a multi-site fiber agreement with a single regional provider, leveraging the combined volume across all six facilities to secure pricing well below what Azure Standard had been paying for inferior services.
The Outcome
Every facility moved to dedicated fiber with three times the bandwidth of their previous connections. Total monthly connectivity costs actually decreased despite the massive upgrade, because ITG eliminated the inefficiency of six separate carrier relationships and leveraged aggregate buying power. Warehouse systems, VoIP, and inter-facility data transfers now run without bottlenecks.
Client Telecom Spend Optimization
Representative enterprise client — annual telecom expenditure over 10 years
How We Exceed
Expectations
From Bi-Mart’s 40-year partnership to last week’s billing correction — every client gets the same hands-on attention, whether you’re a 3-location CPA firm or a 79-store retailer. We’re paid by the carriers at standard industry rates — never by you, never with markup, and never in a way that influences which provider we recommend. Full commission transparency available on request.
Why ITG vs. another broker? Most brokers hold relationships with 15–30 carriers and call it a day. ITG accesses hundreds — built over 40 years of Pacific Northwest carrier work, not a vendor portal login. You get one point of contact who owns the relationship start to finish, not a hand-off to an implementation desk you’ve never met.
Audit & Discovery
We dig into every contract across every location — flagging overcharges, unused lines, and auto-renewal traps that cost growing companies thousands.
Proposal Management
We build your RFP, collect bids, and deliver a structured analysis. Our team leverages AI behind the scenes to streamline research — but you’ll only ever work with real people.
Comparison Shopping
With hundreds of carrier and technology partners in our network, we match your industry and growth stage to the right provider — whether you’re 50 people or a 2,000-site operation.
Contract Negotiation
We go to the table with your real leverage — securing pricing, SLAs, and terms that reflect what a committed, long-term customer is actually worth.
Project Management
Rolling out SD-WAN across 15 locations? Migrating to UCaaS mid-merger? We orchestrate the entire project so nothing falls through the cracks.
Lifecycle Support
Most vendors disappear after install. We don’t. ITG becomes an extension of your team — knowing your history, flagging renewals, and picking up the phone when something goes wrong.
Trusted by organizations across the Pacific Northwest
What Our Telecom Clients & Partners Say
Relationships built on trust, honesty, and results that compound over decades.
“He has saved us more than a million dollars over the years on our million-dollar annual telecom budget. When our Springfield store had a fire, John was instrumental in helping get phone lines moved so we could open a pharmacy two days later. When one of our key vendors went into a sudden bankruptcy that could have left us off the air for weeks, John helped us work with a replacement so there was no downtime. John is a straight shooter, and an ethical man who keeps Bi-Mart in good deals and out of trouble.”
“itg Group is a company with integrity, selflessness, and dedication to see the job through. They were available even after installation — getting an outage resolved at 10:15pm on a Saturday! We saved 20% monthly on our Telecom Bill and have a better solution. I would recommend itg Group to every company wanting to take a serious look at their Communications needs.”
“We have chosen to work with itgGroup for the past 15 years. No longer do we have to fight with the big bureaucratic companies. ItgGroup works intimately with all the major carriers to accomplish our goals. They save us money and time — which are both invaluable to us! I refer to John Smythe as our ‘Communications Guru.’”
“I can’t say enough about how ITG Group has helped us. Their ability to handle the bidding process — and work with any provider — ensures I get the best solution for the best price.”
Awards & Commendations
Recognized by clients, carriers, and industry partners across three decades of service.
Recognized by Bi-Mart leadership for exceptional performance and long-term dedication as their telecommunications partner.
Earned Elite Premier Partner status for outstanding 2012 results — featured at the Channel Partners conference in Las Vegas.
Certified as a Telecom Solutions Professional, demonstrating mastery of carrier products, service design, and multi-vendor environments.
300+ Telecom & IT Providers We Work With
These are just some of the 300+ providers ITG works with.
Know Before You Sign
Plain-English guides on telecom contracts, broker models, and carrier strategy — plus free tools that help you spot overcharges, estimate bandwidth, and track renewals.
Telecom Advisory, Explained
The questions we hear most often from IT directors and CFOs considering an audit or a broker relationship for the first time.
No. ITG Group is paid directly by the carriers we place business with, at a flat industry-standard rate that doesn’t vary based on which provider you choose. Our audits, contract reviews, and ongoing carrier management are delivered at zero cost to you — the carrier covers it from their channel budget, not your invoice.
Most businesses we audit save between 15% and 30% of monthly telecom spend, with an average closer to 20%. Savings come from billing errors, cancelled services still on invoices, month-to-month rates on contracts that should have been renegotiated, over-provisioned circuits, and pricing that hasn’t kept pace with the market. The fastest way to get a real number: send us a recent invoice and we’ll give you an honest read within two business days.
About two weeks for a typical mid-market environment. Multi-site businesses with 20+ locations run three to five weeks. Your involvement is minimal — we need recent invoices, a signed letter of agency so we can pull records directly from carriers, and someone to answer a few clarifying questions. The rest is on us.
Yes — and it’s actually the right time to start. Contracts contain billing errors regardless of term status, and catching them now means recovering money you’re already overpaying. We’ll also build a renewal strategy so you’re positioned well before the window opens. Most of our best negotiations happen 6–12 months before a contract ends, not after.
Over 300, including every major national carrier — AT&T, Comcast Business, Lumen/CenturyLink, Spectrum Business, Verizon — plus regional providers that often outperform nationals in the Pacific Northwest (Ziply Fiber, Wave Broadband, and others). For cloud and unified communications: RingCentral, Microsoft Teams, Zoom Phone, 8x8, Five9, Genesys, and dozens more. Every carrier pays the same flat commission rate, so we have no financial reason to favor any one of them.
Not when it’s planned properly — which is what we do. We handle full project management for every transition: coordinating install dates, ensuring new circuits are tested before old ones are cut, porting numbers on a schedule that protects your business. We’ve managed hundreds of transitions, including complex cutovers at multi-location retailers and healthcare environments with zero-downtime requirements. The carriers we recommend have met those standards. The ones that haven’t aren’t on our shortlist.
- •Reviewed by the ITG team — never handed off to a sales floor
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- •BAA available on request for healthcare clients
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