Common mistakes made when purchasing a lease line!

Understand Your Operational Requirements! - A good connectivity specialist will want to know everything about your set up. How many staff, how many sites, how internet critical, how do you secure your data, do guests and their devices have access to your network, what are your plans in the event of your internet access failing, where is your data stored and how often does it back up are but the tip of the ice berg in understanding how an organisation use their internet connection on a daily basis.

Understand Your Financial Requirements! - This is a tricky one, people feel like by disclosing their budget they're prone to being ripped off or oversold. The problem is that failing to disclose one or setting a budget that is not in proportion to your businesses operational requirements can cause serious issues later down the line. Try to understand how important your voice and data are to your business before setting the budget for them and by using trusted suppliers present that budget along side your needs to ensure you get the most you can for your business within your budget.

Know The Difference! A lot of companies will infer that you'll get the same service no matter where you go because they all use BT Lines etc. Unfortunately that's just not the case and just because open reach come out to do some of the engineering doesn't necessarily mean you'll be on the BT network for your connectivity. By asking some of the following questions you can start to scratch the surface a little deeper on the type of service they are quoting for.

• Is the company providing the leased line a Tier 1 ISP in the UK? (If not they’ll be peering with someone, who with and how much visibility do they have)
• What is the expected up-time on their circuit?
• What SLA cover will you have?
• Is the service truly not contended end to end?
• Are you covered for loss of business if the circuit goes down and to what extent?
• Is there any DDOS protection on their circuit/network?
• How much have they spent on their network to ensure quality of service and security of information?
• How big is the company billing you for the service, what happens if they go out of business? 

I hope this brief post can provide some guidance considerations for those new to purchasing a connectivity solution. If you'd like me to elaborate or talk through some of the points I've made here or some of the ones I haven't then feel free to drop me a message on here or call 02073361457.

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