I know that this saying is quite cliche, but it’s been on my mind lately as I think of the amount of time and money that businesses spend to evaluate their telecom (voice) and data cost(s).

Today there are more businesses that want to charge you money to evaluate what you have than ever before.  If you’re a government entity there are companies that want to help you write your RFP, there are also many call accounting groups that want to audit your telecom and wireless expenses.  They’ll plug in all of your numbers to make sure that you’re not paying too much and compare that against what the proper rate structure is.  If you have an abundance of time and you want to talk things out with each of the carriers to see what their most current promotions are, you can contact each one individually and get quotes for each of your locations.  Below are links to some of the more well known carriers:

CenturyLink – AT&T – TW Telecom – Integra – Paetec - Level 3 – LightYear – XO Communications

Call accounting software, RFP audits and working with the carriers directly are all good things to consider depending upon your situation.  My point in this posting is to let you know that there is an option to spending tons of upfront money and time in evaluating your current telecom and data costs, especially if you have a multi office environment.  Work with a carrier agnostic agency that already has relationships with all of the carriers and access to many additional resources that you might be seeking to save yourself time.  In most cases these individuals or agencies will charge you nothing upfront, they have extensive industry experience, and they make their money once they place you into a service or product that works best for your business.  After many years inside the direct channel for a number of carriers and now 6 years with the indirect side of our business it’s important to know that you will not pay more money when you buy through an agency vs. buying direct.  The cost model is identical regardless of who you sign an agreement with.

Save time and money and seek these consultants out.

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10 years ago most businesses could get away with having just 1.5 Mb of bandwidth to the Internet.  Today that doesn’t touch the surface on what is needed, particularly if you’re utilizing your connection to access many of the applications now available.  As SaaS (Software as a Service) models continue to grow and more and more businesses reach outside of their LANS for dial tone, CRM, ERP, PLM, SCM, SRM type applications, the need for bigger and better bandwidth will always be needed.  I stuck dial tone in the list above because now more than ever more and more businesses are looking to get a hosted PBX – Telesphere is a company that seems to have a grasp on this technology.

With cloud computing software designers can design, build, and deliver services that allow clients to easily access their applications from virtually any location.  IBM seems to be positioned extremely well to assist many of the large software providers with implementing a SaaS strategy.  Today, increased demand for Internet access is directly driven by the need for business applications.

Most of the carriers will bond T-1′s to provide their customers 3.0 – 9.0 Mb of access, but most have realized that to be positioned for the future they have to provide ethernet grade Internet access.  Qwest has led the way in their 14 states providing ELA (Ethernet LAN Access) to the Internet over their QMOE (Qwest Metro Optical Ethernet) backbone.  TW Telecom, Integra, and XO offer great pricing on their EoC (Ethernet over Copper) offerings.  Be patient when you’re working to check availability and get quotes for this service as it can sometimes be a lengthy process.  As always, make sure that you’re working with a carrier agnostic agency so that you can get multiple pricing from one source.

Happy Surfing!