Broadband Support- Don't leave your Network without It

Mike Kelsen

In our last blog, we talked about the benefits of incorporating broadband (BB) into the corporate WAN. Now, let’s talk about how you realize those benefits. Really, it’s all in the support. Unlike those more expensive private, leased-line options, BB is not 99.99999% reliable. Come on, there is no such thing as a free lunch, right? Being that much cheaper (for so much more bandwidth), there had to be a catch. And the catch is that BB flaps and dips. You know this from your Internet connection at home.

The key to making BB reliable enough for deployment in a demanding corporate environment is having the tools and support to start remediating performance loss immediately upon occurrence. Imagine having a tech sitting with you at home ready to trouble-shoot your Internet connection anytime it goes down. Now, that’s what I’m talking about! So, deploying BB as transport in your corporate WAN is really not going to work unless you also roll-out an aggressive, forward-leaning and dogged operational support solution. I’m talking about a support desk that is on the other end of the phone (or e-mail, or IM or text message) 24x7 and ready to trouble-shoot and repair circuit connectivity like it is their mission.

Trust me when I tell you – finding BB transport is easy. The hard part is finding a partner who will keep your BB network humming day-in and day-out so that you can realize the cost savings and performance benefits that you were after when you made the switch in the first place.