As providers extend their network through underlying supplier relationships, the lines become blurred between who is a carrier and who is a solution provider. The truth is, almost every provider out there is buying last-mile connectivity through aggregation techniques to fill in the gaps of their network and provide a more holistic solution for customers on one bill.
From wired to wireless to fiber connectivity, diverse telecom channels and service options have greatly expanded the network presence capacity for both carriers and solution providers at any given address.
This is especially true when solution providers aggregate telecom service from carriers to combine disparate networks into a single service that leverages multiple points of connectivity. As providers expand their network through these techniques, it becomes more important to look at a provider's network presence instead of just their owned network facilities.
What Is Network Presence?
Network presence is similar to presence information, which is an indicator of someone’s ability or willingness to communicate. For example, when someone is “away” on the Zoom channel, the platform is using presence information.
Network presence is the combination of a provider's owned network facilities and their underlying suppliers, providing you a better look into their full coverage area. Older and even many current tools do not take network presence into account. But powerful bandwidth research tools, such as BandwidthFinder, allow sales agents to evaluate network presence like never before. BandwidthFinder shifts the evaluation process for customers seeking service at an address.
In this article, we explore how telecom aggregators monitor network presence of providers and how the right tools can help.
Increased Network Presence Improves Last-Mile Service
The term “last-mile” originated in the transportation industry, and refers to the literal last mile of the transportation route. This situation serves as a useful analogy for the last-mile connectivity service.
Imagine a truck travels from Chicago to San Francisco. The majority of the trip takes place on the highway where the truck can travel fast. In the final stretch of the trip, the truck exits from the highway, travels down smaller highways and roads, many of which can be narrower with more turns, which makes traveling slower.
Solution providers and agents seek to improve the slowness of last-mile service for their customers. Network presence plays a key component. Specifically, network presence reflects the diverse telecom networks and consistency of service that affects each customer’s connectivity, especially when it comes to service from cloud-based applications.
Although last-mile service is often the service feature that gets more attention, network presence is actually more reflective of a provider’s full service and connectivity quality at an address.
Improving Service Through Diverse Telecom Networks
As both businesses and private households increase their dependence on cloud-based services and solutions, a reliable connection affects their ability to maintain regular operations and keep their technology online at all times. The ability to see and make purchasing decisions based upon a provider's network presence makes this possible.
By servicing addresses through aggregated service in a local market, providers can expand their network presence to strengthen their overall product and deliver unsurpassed quality of service to their customer base. But many providers experience a major problem with being able to express their full footprint. For this reason, providers need a way to express their full network presence, including the addresses they can service through aggregating other suppliers into a full solution.
A way to do this is by implementing modern tools, such as BandwidthFinder, that provide the relevant capabilities of the supplier.
Modern Research Tools Have Raised the Value of Network Presence
Network presence has always been an important consideration for all sales channels trying to develop solutions for customers across one or more addresses. In the past, though, manual research processes and complex data sets have made it difficult to fully understand network presence at any given address.
With this uncertainty around network presence, carriers, suppliers, and sales agents have been unable to fully leverage network presence in their evaluative process. The rise of powerful bandwidth research tools has eliminated this constraint, providing better visibility into network presence and allowing both agents and customers to make decisions based on this crucial data point—all in an effort to identify the best service option at an address.
Partner with a Telecom Aggregator with the Right Tools
There are many steps to understanding how to guarantee the best connectivity from your service provider. Luckily, MasterStream makes it easy for customers to evaluate providers with tools like the BandwidthFinder, an algorithmic tool that houses data sets from fiber carriers and broadband providers to provide precise information when you need it.
For more thought leadership from telecom aggregators, make use of our checklist, How to Achieve Telecom Sales Automation with Accuracy and Speed.
