There was a time when finding T3 services involved picking up a phone book and searching the local pages for a provider in your area. Yes, you would find a provider for your connection, but another issue at hand would be price. Providers were fewer in numbers, and you more than likely had to pay premium dollar for your Internet and voice communications. While it was a necessity, it was expensive.
Finally along came the Internet and allowed for T3 providers to branch out and get noticed on a national scale. This opportunity gave birth to additional bandwidth providers making the Internet shopping place a crowded space and somewhat confusing for business bandwidth shoppers. Luckily bandwidth brokers saw a niche to fill and ultimately grew online to serve the needs of the shopping business IT community. The brokers allowed one source shopping for multiple T3 providers, giving the customer less headache.
It was some time after the Internet growth of T3 providers that real-time quotes popped up to further give convenience for online business shoppers and IT professionals looking to replace or expand their bandwidths. These real-time quotes, regardless of convenience, may not be all their cut out to be, or are they?
Okay, so it’s true you can browse T3 providers in an instant and usually get very accurate quotes. Even better, you can compare without having to call different bandwidth providers and deal with sales pressure, however, will you get the best negotiable rate, and even more important, will the provider be reliable?
There is the possibility you can, in reality though the chances are good that you may end up loosing more money than you tried to save. With low pricing, low quality of service can follow, and if not properly informed, a business can experience loss of an entire operation for days. Not all good deals will result in this nightmare scenario, but you must be aware, it is a high probability.
What would downtime do to your business? Might you loose a large number of clients? Loose out on new sales? How much per hour do you pay your employees and how much will you be paying them before you realize your business is at a halt? Productivity is a high commodity in the business world, you don’t want to loose it.
Always be sure to know a provider’s track record when comparing T3 prices. If your broker is entirely dedicated to selling you one single provider, be wary. I’m not saying a broker is not after your best interests, but bandwidth providers are known to offer spiff promotions to agents, and this can cause the drive to sell a product solely on the rewards to the agent.
The same problems that could plague you with a bad T3 purchase can affect you all the same with any other bandwidth leases including T1, OC1, OC3, OC12, OC48, OC96, OC192, and up. On a larger bandwidth scale, obviously, the repercussions are more severe.
Your broker should function much like an IT employee of your company and represent only the offers that will ultimately benefit your situation. If a broker starts trying to up sell you on bandwidth, this can be a bad warning sign.
A type of bandwidth broker that can save your company a lot of money without sacrificing quality is a wholesale broker. A wholesale bandwidth broker essentially has pre-leased bandwidth from various providers and is able to negotiate lower rates and possibly more flexible contract terms.
Additional tactics can be added, but here are a few to get started:
Leadership
Distinguish yourself in the top tier of sales producers within your organization or industry
Visibility
Remember that finding the right T3 provider relies on research and you are ultimately responsible for the leasing of services. Larger bandwidths such as OC3 or OC192, the same broker rules will apply.
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