All Networks Suffer Outages; It’s How Your Provider Responds
October 9, 2008
Jeff Williams, VP of Enterprise Sales at AFS, answered another question on a hypothetical sales situation so well, I asked him to respond to this query with his thoughts. I’ll throw in my two cents another day.
Question about 100% on-net network uptime for all optical customers: Does AFS have any on-net buildings that are stubbed (no dual entrance)? AFS has never had a fiber cut to a stubbed building? AFS has never had ANY outage for an on-net all optical customer?
Of course AFS doesn’t have dual entrance into every single building — cost would be prohibitive and not all applications warrant that level of network diversity. AFS does, however, work with each customer specifically to understand application network requirements, uptime goals & % reliability. We then deliver the best network that fits into budget parameters.
All networks are subject to fiber cuts and outages, including AFS. We don’t have a magical holograph that pops up in front of the backhoe operator that warns of a pending fiber cut. It is how the vendor responds after an incident occurs that separates the great from the good or bad. For example:
- What consequences does your vendor impose on itself if the SLA threshold is not met?
- How much skin does your vendor have in the game in the form of penalties & credits? Is it proportional to their level of urgency when fixing the problem?
- How much red tape & documentation do you need to provide in order to get your credit? Or is it proactive?
- Will they provide you an “out” in the contract – and allow you to take your business to a competitor – even mid-contract?
- When you call the NOC – are you subject to L1 techs that run through simplistic FAQ scripts but have little ability to provide in-depth-trouble-shooting? Or do you get an engineer who can solve the problem?
Vendors in our industry have developed reputations for levels of responsiveness during crisis situations. If you ask the customers, they will tell you that all providers have outages. They will also tell you that there is a wide disparity in the service levels/responsiveness between AFS and the companies mentioned in my last post (LVL3, XO, ATT, Verizon). Fortune 500 companies spend a lot of money with firms like Telwares just to understand where SLA best-practices should be benchmarked across the industry. They do this because not all service guarantees are the same–some are drastically superior to others. This still has not been commoditized.
Shoot Dave an email if you have a question or a different take on his topics. You can also post your comments and questions below.
Written by Dave Rusin - Telecom Executive
Posted by jwilliams | Filed Under American telecom, Fiber bandwidth, Telecom broadband, Telecommunications industry, Trends + telecommunications, Trends in telecommunications
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