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.
Once upon a time, shopping for a T3 connection detailed the process of grabbing up a copy of a Yellow Pages Directory and searching it’s contents for a bandwidth broker or provider in your area. You might find a provider, but with little selection to choose from, prices did not come by as affordable.While obtaining a T3 business line was a necessity, it was costly and with fewer providers, you paid a premium rate for reliability.
Eventually the Internet came along and added a boost to the T3 bandwidth provider industry. This lead to an overwhelmingly influx of options and providers causing some confusion for those businesses wanting both affordability and reliable T3 connectivity. With all of this confusion, brokers found additional opportunity in providing quick and easy consultive services for businesses seeking T3 lines over the Internet, but not wanting to deal with multiple provider offers and sales pitches.
It was in this time of need that real-time quotes became a new industry standard. Everywhere you look online now, there are offers for instant quotes from tons of providers and brokers, made to save you time, but are they good for saving money?
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.
While T3 bandwidth is the highlight of the topic here, you could just as easily fall victim to bad service with any bandwidth type. The larger the bandwidth, the bigger the disaster, obviously.
Ask yourself, what would downtime do to your business? Would you loose sales? Would an entire customer service call center be shut down? Would a major potential partner revert from their decision? Would you be paying employees for services not rendered? Your up-time can very well be your reputation just as much as your productivity, don´t be quick to forget that.
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.
Remember that finding the right T3 connection relies on research and you are ultimately responsible for the leasing of services. Larger bandwidths such as OC3 or OC12, the same broker rules will apply.
t3, t3 line, t3 connection, business bandwidth, internet, t3 broker, broker, shopping, business internet, internet, bandwidth, internet bandwidth, business broadband
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