It was not long ago that telecom carriers seemed to be shunning legacy copper services such as POTS lines, CO trunks, centrex lines, and PRIs. These services are expensive to maintain, difficult to manage, and are cannibalizing potential sales of new technologies that would help the carriers to become further embedded within their customers' organizations. So it would make sense that the carriers would not bid on new opportunities, sell off assets in rural areas, or offer nominal discounts on renewals...they want you to buy their new stuff instead! Now the carriers are changing their approach. But why?

It turns out many companies are just not ready to buy the new stuff that the carriers want to sell and need to find a way to stay within budget based on those constraints. That means the simplest way to get savings beyond the lackluster incumbent (typically the ILECs) proposals is to consolidate services with an aggregator. After seeing these services retained but moved to competitors over the past few years, the carriers have realized that it's going to be incredibly hard to win that business back when it comes time for the customer to make a technology change. After all, it's easier for a customer to upgrade technology with an incumbent supplier that is familiar, already knows and owns the customer's services, and can easily help to build the business case for the change since they have access to all of the information and costs associated with current state as well as what the future state could look like. Comparatively, all other carriers are at a significant disadvantage.

So what does this change mean to customers of legacy telecom services? Start getting a handle on those old, low cost (but high volume) services you have not made time for in the past 10 years (20 years? Seriously? More than 20 years?). The tariffs are going through the roof and you are definitely billing off contract for some, maybe all of those services. Your incumbent suppliers are incredibly eager to retain that business at significant discounts, and if for some reason they are an exception that is not interested in the business, there are many others who would gladly take over. You will gain tremendous insight and visibility into your spend while you prepare for future technology changes.

While reigning in these services and costs is a lot of work, the effort pays remarkable dividends. Spend for legacy telecom services is typically disparate and has evolved over time. A location orders a new line for their new fax machine and the old one is never disconnected. Another location moves across the street or to the other side of town and services continue to bill at both addresses. New services are ordered without reference to existing accounts (or supplier) and the invoices pile up for a surprisingly small set of services. And let's not even get into the fact that the carriers do not make it easy to even identify what services compose your monthly invoice total. So it does stake some effort and it does take some time, but it's worth it.

For resources and telecom expertise support expedite and enhance your cost reduction efforts while helping to plan for the future, contact Source One Management Services, LLC via www.sourceoneinc.com
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David Pastore

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