Finding the right telecom provider for your business or facility isn’t as simple as it used to be, particularly when connecting multiple locations. Organizations rely more heavily than ever on the speed and reliability of their network and as technology moves faster, it is vital that your telecom provider has the resources and systems in place to keep up.

Before you sign a contract, make sure your telecom provider ticks these five boxes.

Local Solution Specialists, Engineers and Operations Teams

Work with a company that does business where you do. That’s on the ground and available locally when you need them.

Cutting edge technology is important, but at the end of the day, networks are designed, built, managed and maintained by people. Make sure you go with a provider that puts as much emphasis into the people-side of telecommunications as they do to the fiber optics.

When something goes wrong or your needs change, you’ll be glad to be working with people who truly care about finding you a solution.

A Well-Run Network Operations Center (NOC)

Not all Network Operations Centers are created equal. The NOC serves as the first line of defense against network disruptions and failures and your provider must ensure that highly skilled support teams are accessible anytime, day or night, 24/7/365.

NOC best practices include:

  • Support staff focuses on the customer journey before, during, and after your network build
  • All incidents, outages and performance issues are resolved in a timely manner
  • Recognizes, identifies and prioritizes incidents according to each customer’s unique needs
  • Provide performance, quality, and optimization reporting

Robust Service Level Agreements (SLA)

Service level agreements should clearly define not only a detailed description of the services to be provided but also expected service levels and the metrics that will be used to measure the quality of service.

A telecom provider that stands behind the reliability of the networks they build will include remedies or penalties for breach of the SLA, giving you peace of mind in the quality of telecom services you are paying for, whether it be internet, ethernet, fiber services or VOIP.

Flexibility and Customization

Build your network with a company that offers a wide range of infrastructure solutions to build the network you need, no matter where you’re located or what ever challenges pop up along the way. A flexible telecom provider will offer fiber, microwave and hybrid networks in order to address a wide range of physical obstacles while also providing the network capacity and reliability you need.

Often, the best network design for your situation requires a custom solution crafted with creative thinking and problem solving. Stay away from telecom providers that force you into out of the box solutions.

Room to Grow

Keeping up with the speed of technological innovation is paramount to the success of your business or organization. Industries across the board are in constant need for greater capacity to ensure excellent network performance, reliability, and sufficient bandwidth to effortlessly run the applications needed for smooth operation.

From financial services to manufacturing, technology, energy, professional services, telecom, education and government, every organization can benefit from partnering with an experienced, high-capacity network provider for communications solutions that enable growth and expansion while offering the latest technologies such as 400G Waves.

You need a partner because very few businesses have the resources available to properly manage their own network infrastructure. A network provider will stay up to speed on increasingly stringent requirements for data privacy and security and give you the availability and flexibility you need to thrive in a competitive marketplace.

More than ever, access to unlimited bandwidth drives productivity and keeps you ahead of the curve. A Forward-thinking telecom provider cares about where you’re headed and helps put the tools in place to get you there. Building a network that exceeds your needs for today prepares you to scale at a moment’s notice to meet the demands of tomorrow.