Telecom Consulting assists organizations in an unbiased, independent manner to design, benchmark and deploy next gen networks across telco data carriers.  A consultant in telecom has years of technical background experience in both the architecture and pricing negotiations arena to support your business.  For many enterprises, the telecom contract refresh with carrier vendors happens every 3-5 years, drastically putting them at a disadvantage.

With a telecom consultant team, you are taking advantage of their daily workstream on both the best technology and pricing options for the business so you can stay more focused on your day-to-day support of the business.  IT teams are not asked to stay out of the process, however the opposite, engage in the lifecycle to learn more about the industry changes and opportunities for their enterprise.

Cloud networking and interconnects, mobile device management and Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) will continue to change the landscape in 2023.  Telecom Consulting breaks out the difference now covering these areas vs. the original migrations of Frame Relay to MPLS for example.  Teams must consider how their SDWAN is inclusively routing and the opex impacts to cloud which is new for many organizations.  Cloud presents an opportunity to design more remote nodes but areas such as consistency and security must be considered with your telecom consultant.  Cloud has changed the traditional rules of what the corporate office looks like and has put many in IT off-balance because there is no true playbook for all.

Carrier telecom consulting should explain how each network is vastly different which also must take into consideration cost and the value of what is being built.  Carrier Consultants in this scenario play an even bigger role to help navigate what’s important for your specific.  Even extremely large telecom consulting companies who assist the fortune 100 space will agree that having an external party to keep everyone honest is a necessity.  Even if you utilize their experience sample telecom network extension proposal sample

Where can a Consultant in Telecom assist?

  1. Benchmarking:  Repricing the existing or new service offerings across multiple providers, without those telecom providers requesting multiple meetings is paramount.  As a telecom consultant we have access to industry and specific pricing across voice and data carriers sometimes keeping the direct vendor on the sidelines until they are needed later.
  1. Technology Upgrade:   If you find that your voice or data network resembles a decade that was several presidents ago, you are not alone.  Many IT teams do not have the resources or time they did years ago managing a network.  Allowing a telecom consulting team to help you evaluate and possibly integrate a new voice and data network can help you lower cost while improving functionality.
  1. Telecom Master Services Agreements:   All Telecom Contracts should possess favorable terms should be negotiated and there are three main areas every organization should request.  However, if you only go to contract every 3 years, you are at a disadvantage
  1. Cloud Networking into the corporate FinOps Strategy:  As more organizations leverage cloud over a traditional datacenter, using a telecom advisor will help secure cost optimization in alignment with your FinOps org.  Many services which connect multi-cloud today can be billed on a monthly or hourly basis which is completely opposite of the traditional carrier model.  This is a huge opportunity for organizations to take advantage of cloud networking design and testing without making long-term commitment mistakes.
  1. Telecom Billing Audit and Review:  You do not need to be a CPA to audit and review telecom carrier invoices as the math and what was contracted is pretty straight forward.  However, what trips up many organizations is the tax rate change if applicable, discount codes falling off or worse, a moved/cancelled circuit still billing erroneously unbeknownst to finance.  As a telecom consultant, a quick bill read should yield immediate savings.   
  1. Voice and WAN RFP:  If your network is small, we do not typically recommend a long drawn out RFI/RFP for a network or voice architecture.  The reason is your environment can still be treated as such however an RFP for a new WAN for example will only slow your process down.  For larger complex topologies and those who have a traditional LEC in-line, we would recommend looking at the sourcing model of a formal RFP/RFI process.  This will ensure both a level playing field and that all internal environments are pulled out and bid on appropriately.  Often in large companies, the “we forgot about this network” is common because the network grew by acquisition, project, or simply slow conversions.

3 Considerations your Telecom Consultant will include:

  1. ISP Diversity to build a true N+1 redundancy against telecom outages which can potentially occur is paramount.  Pricing for a dual network have reduced by more than 50% in the last 5 years and you should consider a fault tolerant WAN against a single telecom provider, especially for internet.
  1. Negotiation strategies across telecom carriers even if you are not using the Top 10 Telecom providers.  Pricing, liability, and payment terms are table steaks however we use a 10-point strategy to help companies maximize and protect their investment.  Often, IT teams and internal counsel are not familiar on what to ask nor is the finance sourcing team.  Utilize existing experience a telecom consultant brings to the negotiation table.
  1. Inventory Management:  Proper inventory management and possible bill pay or telecom expense management service if needed.  If you do not know where all the network and voice skeletons are, you are not alone.  Many companies simply thought they cancelled a service; forgot they assumed other assets during an acquisition or simply unaware someone ordered an extra broadband circuit.  This means not only are you fully unaware of total spend in volume, but you probably do also not have access to the signed contract.

Telecom Consulting priorities in 2023:

Often, we as telecom consultants are asked where are the priorities that you will have the largest focus on in 2023?  That obviously varies per client use case but be sure, the below items have already been a focus, question or executed strategy for many before 2023 rings in the new year.

  1. Office closures:  Telecom Consultants will continue to assist companies with the decision to lower commercial office footprint in favor of remote workers. 
  1. SDWAN downturn:  Many organizations have begun redesigning their corporate WAN from a distributed office connected architecture to full cloud.  If all your corporate workloads reside in public cloud, do you need a traditional Wide Area Network and that’s why a consultant in telecom can assist.  Do not be fooled by an industry article or vendor who makes the case it’s necessary.  If your workforce is remote, why can’t you build a Zero Trust Network into your public cloud tenancy?
  1. Network Consulting:  As more enterprises redeploy to cloud ops, network engineers will be deprioritized as the WAN becomes simpler.  However, Security, Remote Workers, and other key Network HA environments.
  1. Contact Center.  Not just in Contact Center, but voice overall especially if your company has legacy POTS services which should understand the new FCC guidelines on FCC-192.  This relieves the requirement of local telecom carriers providing traditional copper POTS services.  Telecom Consultants will look to implement a new service across offices especially for Life Safety lines needed for fire and burglar communications. 
  1. Telecom Expense Management (TEM):  If you are unfamiliar with TEM services, you should quickly get up to speed.  Organizations that take advantage of a billing expense and inventory process see a 25% is savings from incorrect billing and reduced cycle time for the team. 

In summary, many teams can go the journey alone or use a specialist to help support their initiatives of cost optimization while raising the profile of their network.  There is no intention to assume the role of anyone in IT, telecom consultants such as Macronet Services simply want to help redesign & renegotiate at a minimum to assist enterprises.

We have worked on over 5,000 network designs over the years and would welcome the opportunity to assist yours.  Please reach out, we’d be happy to provide a simple and free audit to steer you into a the right savings plans before you even decide to work with us.

Contact us to explore Telecom Consulting Options