Today's guest post is from John Dobken, Insight's Senior manager of business development, and Chris Hibbs, Engineering Manager for Insight Business.
Most of our customers are surprised when they find out that we not only offer our high speed broadband Internet over cable, but that we also offer fiber-based Ethernet products to businesses under our InsightBusiness brand name. There are some distinguishing features of our fiber-based Ethernet products.
Simple Customer Handoffs - Rather than using traditional carrier interfaces such as T1, DS3, OC3, etc. for our private line and dedicated Internet products, our handoff to the customer is an industry standard copper Ethernet interface which can be plugged into any switch or router that has an Ethernet port. This is a major benefit to customers since Ethernet ports are typically less expensive and more readily available than T1 or DS3 interfaces. Customers can also use off-the-shelf laptops or PC’s to verify the speeds we are providing them, rather than needing to use specialized and expensive telecom test equipment.
Massive Scalability – We use gigabit optics between our customer’s site and our headend (switching office) to deliver products that can rapidly grow whenever the customer needs them to. In the case of a customer that needs 30 Mbps up and down to the Internet, we configure our equipment to rate limit the connection to 30Mbps, however that leaves up to 970 Mbps of additional bandwidth available for use later. So whenever our customer decides that they need to increase their circuit from 30Mbps to 50Mbps or 100Mbps or 500Mbps or even 1Gbps, all we have to do on our end is to set up a maintenance ticket with our network operations center, change the rate limit on the equipment configurations, and come out to the customer location to verify and test the circuit’s new speeds. All this is typically done within 72 hours. Customers no longer have to wait weeks or in most cases, months for the carrier to upgrade the connection from a DS3 to either two DS3’s or to an OC3 circuit.
Even More Scalability – In addition to gigabit optics, we deploy wave division multiplexing (WDM) technology on each circuit we provide. In a nutshell, all WDM means is that rather that just putting one light source on a strand of fiber (i.e. just using one Gigabit optic on each side of a pair of fiber), we install optical splitters and gigabit optics that use wavelength-specific lasers that allow us to put eight or more optical wavelengths (or colors) on the same fiber. So using our previous example, if the customer already has upgraded to 1Gbps but now needs 2 Gbps of bandwidth, all we do is splice in two more fibers into the optical splitter, add another wavelength-specific gigabit optic at the customer location and at our headend, and provision the new circuit. It typically takes us about two weeks from start to finish to add an additional wavelength to an existing customer install. Again, much quicker than the typical long lead times of other carriers.
Guaranteed Bandwidth Rates – If you buy a 30Mbps up and down point-to-point circuit from your main headquarters to your branch office, you are guaranteed that 30Mbps will be available to you 99.995% of the time. We back up our claims with comprehensive service level agreements, but to keep things simple, if the customer is supposed to be getting 30Mbps and is only 29Mbps -- we’re going to come out to the customer's site to fix it.
These are a few of the technical reasons that make our fiber-based Ethernet products the best available in our service area. We believe the best feature is the spirit of customer service that we add to them. We survey each and every customer post installation to try to get valuable feedback on how we can approve our products, processes, and generally just help us continue to be the provider of choice for our customers. We essentially have taken the “Golden Rule” approach to being a transport service provider. Here’s just a few of the things that we do that are a little different than most:
Dedicated Project Managers – Whether or not the customer is purchasing just one 10Mbps dedicated Internet circuit or is linking 15 or more separate sites, each and every customer is assigned a project manager to coordinate the install every step of the way. This includes an initial kickoff meeting with the customer, construction, and engineering to make sure all expectations are set correctly and ends with a face-to-face circuit acceptance meeting where the customer is presented with the circuit’s welcome packet. In between, the project manager is coordinating the fiber construction, circuit provisioning, equipment procurement and installation, and additionally acts as the customer point of contact.
Documented Circuit Testing – All of our circuits are tested by our technicians using specialized network testers. The major test that is performed is the IETF RFC 2544 test, which is the de facto benchmark for testing the performance of Ethernet circuits. After we conclude the test and the circuit is verified to pass 100% of the provisioned bandwidth at a variety of different frame sizes, the full test results are downloaded from our test devices, printed off, and inserted into the circuit welcome packet. This essentially acts as the circuits “birth certificate,” which guarantees to the customer that our circuit will do exactly what we say it will do. If it ever fails to live up to that level of performance, we want to know about it so we can come fix it.
Upfront Escalation Lists – Going with a new service provider is a bit of a gamble and can be pretty stressful. Even though you may be unhappy with some of the policies or procedures that your current provider clings to, you are at least familiar with them and may understand how to navigate through those hurdles. With a new provider, you don’t really know how good (or not so good) their service is until you really need it. Recognizing this concern, we try our best to acknowledge and assuage those fears by being up front about our service and how to get a hold of us when we’re needed. We've built a one-page escalation list that includes contacts at every level of the support organization. First is our dedicated Customer Care Center phone number, followed by, our 24/7 on-call technician number, our engineers’ 24/7 contact information, our engineering manager’s 24/7 contact information, and finally our vice president’s contact information. Even though we're sure that each customer will be satisfied each and every time they call into our Customer Care Center that their question or issue is being handled and escalated properly, we don’t want them to feel like they are at the mercy of a single phone number or contact person.
We try to think of ourselves and our organization as a different sort of service provider -- one that not only provides great technical solutions, but provides great service as well. We are honored when our current customers invite us to talk about planning their future networks and further partnering with them to further advance their business. We not only want to provide world-class transport solutions to our customers, but we also want to form long-term relationships with them where we become a logical extension of their IT organization.
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