How To Select The Right Internet Or Data Provider For Your Organization

At InterWorks, we work with clients of all shapes and sizes around the country. Some of our clients are located in a single office and others have multiple offices spread across a city, state, or country. The issue of data connectivity and carrier choice is one that every organization should carefully consider, particularly since most of these carriers require some sort of contract for any decent level of discount and they are difficult to break without penalty.

The players

There are thousands of choices out there ranging from the well known regional and national players to the thousands of CLEC's (Competitive Local Exchange Carrier) that most of us have never heard of. There are several factors to take into account when selecting your data carrier and I'll attempt to walk you through a *basic* version of our decision tree when we assist our clients in making those decisions.

Organizations with a single office

Depending on the city you live in, there may be one or more carrier in your area other than one of the big boys such as AT&T or Verizon. For example, in Stillwater, OK, we have Chickasaw Telecom that butts right up to the local AT&T office. They are relatively new to the Stillwater market (under 15 years) but their office and employees are very closely tied to the community. I find that working with them is much easier than going through a large player like AT&T because they

1. Offer superior customer service (their agents are located locally in town)
2. Reputation in the community and region is far more important to them than AT&T
3. Their small size allows them to operate and react much more quickly than a large company like AT&T - this means faster install times, quicker reaction to downtime, and going out of their way to resolve an issue when it arises

It should be noted that their prices are generally slightly cheaper than AT&T but that is usually not a factor that plays into the equation because the difference is generally insignificant.
Because we understand the reputation and level of service that this carrier has in Stillwater, OK - we almost always recommend any single office Stillwater client go with Chickasaw for local service. The reality is that if one of our clients has a problem with Chickasaw's service, we know the senior network administrators personally, the office manager, and the customer service employees. They have a personal attachment and incentive to get their local friends and businesses back online if something isn't working right. You can't say the same thing with the big players and their 800 numbers, auto attendants, ticket numbers, and overseas outsourced technical support.
So our rule of thumb for a single office - if we know of a strong local player with a track record and that good ole boy type of attitude - that's our first choice. When we do not know of someone that fits this build, we turn to a major carrier (AT&T, Verizon, Time Warner) and generally avoid small CLECs with unknown reputations. In large metros, we also factor in packages by carriers that can offer incredibly fast connections at reduced rates. For example, in parts of Philadelphia, we can now purchase cable speeds of 50 Mbps down and 10 Mbps up for under $200 / month. In Oklahoma, this same type of service may be in excess of $1000 / month.

Multiple Offices spread geographically

When selecting a data carrier and more than one office is involved and interconnected, there are some additional factors to take into account.

1. Latency - The lower the delay between offices, the quicker the response time when dealing with interactive applications such as Citrix, Terminal Services, browsing shared folders, etc. All other variables being equal, everything ‘feels' faster when you have lower latency. You will want to select a carrier than can keep your latency as low as possible between your locations. 
2. Which carrier owns "the last mile" to the majority of your offices? "The last mile" refers to the final leg of delivery coming into your office. Many times, most businesses will only have one or two carriers that have ‘the last mile' coming into your building. For example, in the Midwest, you will find AT&T (SBC) has connectivity directly into most businesses, but you will almost never find Verizon owning the last mile. Alternatively, in New York City, Verizon will own the last mile for many locations while AT&T will not. By selecting a carrier who owns the last mile, as opposed to a carrier that is leasing the last mile from another carrier, you avoid potential finger pointing where one carrier is blaming the other for their problem. In addition, if a carrier owns the last mile to all of your offices, this will generally result in a lower latency than going with a carrier that does not. 
3. Economies of scale and consolidation of billing - in theory it's generally easier to manage a single bill for multiple locations than multiple bills from different carriers for different locations. Also, as you pile more services onto a single carrier, the cost per location and service should theoretically come down.
4. Remote support - many organizations consolidate I.T. staff to a single location, which means that if you have a communication issue at a remote office, you may need remote hands to troubleshoot because you don't have an on-site tech to deal with the issue. The majority of the big carriers have managed solutions where they can dial-in to a router in the event of a downed circuit to determine exactly what is going on. So if you're working out of your California office, and your Denver office goes offline at 2 AM when nobody is around, a carrier with managed services can dial-in and troubleshoot exactly what is going on to potentially determine the problem and solution before people walk into the office the next morning at 8 AM. 
5. Class of Service (CoS) or Quality of Service (QoS) - if you are running VOIP or other services that you want to prioritize over your wide area network, a single carrier for your multiple sites is almost a must. In addition, you will want to confirm that the type of data circuit you are leasing has the ability to support CoS. If you mix and match carriers, this can become exponentially more challenging.

So what's the rule of thumb for selecting a carrier when you have offices spread across multiple locations? Generally speaking, go with a big player like AT&T or Verizon. Their customer service is known for being terrible, but their data support (if you have T-1 or higher) is usually trained to deal with the type of issue that you may call in on and they can generally respond quickly because it's a smaller division of these large dinosaur companies.

The need for speed

Up to this point I have not discussed bandwidth. There's a lot of misleading marketing spin out there about cable vs. DSL vs. T1 vs. satellite vs. everything else. Speed does factor into the equation and depending on what market you are in, you may be able to get incredible speeds at great rates. The speed aspect should be factored in, but the pieces of the puzzle I mentioned above should also be given heavy consideration.

Other variables to consider

This is by no means a comprehensive list of the variables that make up the equation in selecting the proper data carrier, but they are key factors. If you would like assistance or have any questions about this post, feel free to contact me directly. You may reach me by e-mail or twitter:

Email: behfar@interworksinc.com
Twitter: behfarj