What Every CEO Ought to Know About Telecom Provisioning!
Hi. I'm Max Clark. Let's talk about circuit provisioning. We should just call this, telecom circuit or network circuit or fiber circuit. Now people want to call it connectivity because for some reason, connectivity is better.
Speaker 1:So if I bounce back and forth between calling it a telco and fiber and connectivity, it's because I'm just as confused as you are when it comes to what we call these things nowadays. Let's get into it. I get asked all the time, like, how long is it going to take us to get the circuit? How long does it take to get a circuit? How long does it take to have fiber installed?
Speaker 1:How long does it take to get blah, blah, blah, blah? Before anything else I've talked about in the past, I'm gonna talk about it again right now. If you are ever engaged with a salesperson at any company and they tell you it's gonna take 25 days for the circuit to get installed, they're lying to you. You know, I try not to use strong language like that all the time, but I'm gonna tell you they're lying to you. They do not know.
Speaker 1:The way this works is you're gonna sign the order. And the second that you sign the order, they're gonna submit it and they move on. It doesn't matter. They're not involved anymore. So they could literally tell you that unicorns exist and it doesn't impact them because now at the time you realize you're not gonna get that circuit in 2 weeks, they're so long gone and you're so pot committed that there is just nothing's going to happen.
Speaker 1:Maybe you complain to somebody else who has to go chastise them but at the end of the day they've got the order they get the credit they get the comp and they've moved on to the next we do not promise installation dates we just don't you can't it's impossible and any way that's promising you installation date is lying to you and just know that so if you want to be lied to, just accept it. If you want to understand the truth, just know that there's no such thing as a guaranteed installation. If you're going into a data center, that's a little bit different. But let's just keep this at like on premise installations. Let's talk about the process a little bit.
Speaker 1:When you receive what you're going to receive from a network provider, you're going to receive, usually an m and service order so you can see it like a s o or an s o f or an order form they're gonna have different acronyms depending what actual carriers but you're gonna get an order form and that order form is gonna reference a services agreement. A master services agreement is then going to reference some schedules. There's gonna be addendums. And depending on the size of what you're buying and what your legal overhead is like, you're going to negotiate and want to probably do revisions of the MSA, the SLA, the addendums. I talk about this a lot.
Speaker 1:There's other videos you should watch. There's some important things you're gonna want to look for in negotiating these documents. And by the way, I have never seen a company negotiate any paperwork in a legal process and faster than 2 weeks. So if you're not already accounting for that in your process, in terms of your timeline or communicating that with other people inside your organization, you should start. You know, how long is this going to take?
Speaker 1:Well, you should say language like it's going to take us on average X days after our legal review, which we seem takes 4 to 6 weeks. Right okay because that you control to some degree I guess you know it's kind of on your plate or it's another department's plate so you can create pressure there if necessary oh we need this we just signed a lease for our office space we need to have internet in 2 weeks okay great Go tell our lawyers that they can't negotiate for 6 weeks on the circuit. You know? Like, first things first. You want this circuit in 3 weeks.
Speaker 1:You can't waste 6 weeks negotiating, you know, paperwork. Like, let's let's be really realistic here in terms of our timeline. So anyways, you have gone through your approvals process. You've gone through your legal review process. You've signed paperwork.
Speaker 1:You've sent it and you've submitted it. First thing that happens is what's called order acceptance. Order acceptance is the process carrier is gonna go through. The provider is gonna go through to take your order and to actually load it into their system. And the specifics of this depend on the provider.
Speaker 1:Basically, what they're doing is the thing about it like, okay, somebody is actually taking in, like, typing into a computer system, like, like, thing, like, little squirrel going and typing into the computer system. Maybe they have an integrated ERP, you know, CPQ tool, and they have to go in and they have to click the accept button. You know, there's some process. There is a person doing something. And by the way, that person has a lot of other things that they're doing as well.
Speaker 1:So your order is going to the bottom of some stack and just waiting you know for it to come through depending on the provider that you're dealing with part of that order acceptance process if you don't already have a profile in their system they have to go through the rev ops or sales ops processes to create your profile in their system to create you in their provisioning platform billing system your P system whatever it is that they're using and also depending on the provider and the size of your order you're gonna go through credit check this is why you know having your fin and duns number on paperwork that gets submitted up to the provider is so important because it you know if it's not there, all it happens is they get to that point and they go, oh, hey, we need your fin and your duns. And so you get an email, takes you a couple days, you return it back, it goes back in the bottom of the queue. It takes, you know, another week for them to look at it and then enter the stuff in. On average, we tell people that we see it usually takes between 7 10 days for order acceptance and order entry.
Speaker 1:Takes between 7 10 days for order acceptance and order entry that's a pretty normal timeline some people are faster some people are slower it depends a lot on the provider you're dealing with and what the order is 7 to 10 days on average in order acceptance. This is why when I start off with and I say if somebody promises you a circuit in 2 weeks are lying to you because they're lying to you because their internal process just to do order acceptance and order entry is gonna take a week and a half. How are they gonna deliver a circuit to you in 2 weeks if it's gonna take them a week and a half just to do order acceptance? What happens after that point after order acceptance and order entry then you're gonna go into another queue you're gonna go to another process then you're gonna get it to assigned to a project manager within that provider that takes some time again depending on the provider can take a day or 2 or it could take a week depends on the provider so you go and you get assigned to the project manager that project manager is then going to go through and look at the actual order what's involved what's required what other things come into play you know and start looking through their lists of what they need to start triggering most providers have an automated system or a provisioning platform that says, okay, we have to do step 1 before step 2 can happen.
Speaker 1:So knowing what your steps are in this process down make a big difference. We ask you questions along the lines of, well, before we even look at circuits, for instance, we're looking at is the provider already in the building? Are they in the info? Do they have a ROE right of entry with the building? Can they run their own riser?
Speaker 1:Who's running the riser? Is there a riser management company? Like what other layers come into this thing that affect provisioning that the provider is already in the building? They're in the info they don't have to negotiate ROE and they have the ability to run fiber you know the cable from the info up to you that's gonna be a much better experience and process for you than if they have to negotiate the ROE and there's a rides or management company involved And why are these things so critical? Well, there's a lot of buildings that have now taken looking at that telecom circuit, that connectivity, the provider, whatever you want to call it as additional revenue for the building.
Speaker 1:They know that, hey, if you want to have, you know, provider Zulu come into the building and service you. And this is not unusual. We've seen buildings say, okay, great. We want $5,000 upfront and $1,000 a month in order for you to come into the building and put your stuff on the wall in our info. And this becomes a big problem because that provider is not going to just write that check to that building.
Speaker 1:And at some point when they realize they're not gonna get it for free they're gonna come back to you and they're gonna say hey by the way you know we can still do this but it's gonna cost you this much more in order to do it and you're gonna have to front that bill okay so order acceptance order entry project manager assigned, project manager at that point is going to start triggering a bunch of different things within that provider's platform. And some stuff is gonna get expressed and exposed to you, and some stuff is just gonna be hidden to you. And you're just gonna see a lull of 30 days, for instance and not have any idea what's going on and things that are going on are things like what's the actual route to your location? Where's the nearest fiber asset? Where's the nearest splice point asset?
Speaker 1:What equipment needs to be ordered? They're gonna want a room readiness survey like they're gonna send somebody out to actually inspect the location and fact the location and make sure that it's got everything that you need so these are things that you can shortcut for instance you're going to have to have wall space with baseboard you're going to have to have electrical power within you know the closer the better call it 10 feet of of where their equipment's gonna go you have to have a you for ground if you don't have these things, they're gonna come out and they're gonna look at it and they're gonna say, hey. Great. You know, we found place where we're gonna put our equipment, but there's no baseboard. There's no power, and there's no ground.
Speaker 1:Put all that stuff in. Let us know when it's there, and then we'll come back out and we'll check and take pictures of it, make sure it's ready to go. So if you have that ready before the survey takes place, they're gonna come out and they go check. It's great. Or by the way, pro tip, you can take pictures of all this stuff and immediately send it to PM and say, this is our wall.
Speaker 1:This is a baseboard. Here's a diagram. Here's how much space is. Here's the distance between the receptacle and the and the thing. Here's where the the ground is.
Speaker 1:Here's the distance between the ground and the thing and a lot of times you can skip the requirement to actually have somebody come out do the survey because you've already done the survey and you've already provided the information if you can do that you can accelerate the process a little bit now big difference between phone companies and cable companies on provisioning is where their PMs are in the world what the PMs authority level is if they're just reading from a screen and not actually using their brains or if they're using their brains and actually engage involved in the process you're gonna have a very different experience in provisioning based on those things you're going to have a very different experience in provisioning if the provider has to do any outside plant work construction so this is things like let's say installing fiber there's no fiber in your building so in order to get fiber in the building we have to find a path of building and you can do conduit so sub terrainian or you could do aerial by the way pro tip if they're trying to do a conduit subterranean access into your building and they can't find conduit or condo it's full you can always just say hey can we do an aerial drop and you know run a cable from the telephone pole to the building go through a weather head and down and if you have the ability to mount weather head on the side of the building you can do a much cheaper installation you can do weather head for a couple $1,000 installed versus if you're trenching a parking lot you know numbers just go crazy really quickly $40,000 because we've got a trench 6,000 feet of parking lot like okay great you know that's what it costs okay let me go back to this so you know if outside plant right if you've got outside plant work that has to be done they're gonna come out they're gonna figure out the path and they're gonna do a process called rod and rope so you're gonna have a crew that's gonna come out and that crew is gonna push like literally a flexible rod through the conduit with pull tape attached to it after the pull tape gets to the desk you know to inside the building they take and they pull tape they pull rope they attach rope to the pull tape and they pull the rope through now depending on the provider that same crew is gonna do the fiber pulled.
Speaker 1:A lot of providers, rotten rope is different from the actual fiber pull. So then another crew comes out with a truck with fiber on it with a spool and they attach the fiber to the rope and they pull the fiber into the building. Then you've got maybe another crew that comes out to do the splicing. Then you've got another crew that could come out and do equipment placement and termination, and you've got another crew that can come out and do the actual and and building extension. The point of all this is is how long does it take is a it depends and it depends on everything.
Speaker 1:And it's frustrating because chances are somebody else inside the organization is saying, hey, when can we have this? And they've never done this before. They don't understand. And this is why that anyway, that does this a lot. We usually come back and say, you know, I don't know how long it's gonna take.
Speaker 1:We're gonna find out, you know, like, or they're gonna give you something more lock into, you know, based on what we know and what we can see today. We think this installation is gonna take between 45 60 days, or we're pretty sure we're pretty confident this installation is gonna take between 60 90 days. Or guess what? You're doing construction, which means automatically it's gonna take between a 120 and a 150 days. By the way, along the way in these construction projects, things can go really sideways on you.
Speaker 1:Right? What's an example of that? Oh, we need to do pull cable along telephone poles. But because it's in a fire prone area, we had to do a weight loading study on the telephone poles. And the telephone poles are at capacity, so we can't pull fiber on the telephone poles.
Speaker 1:We have to replace them first, and we 6 of them by the way do you want to spend the money to replace the 6 of them but now that we know this has triggered this event so we have to replace them anyways what's gonna take us 6 months to replace them so after that 6 months is expired or you know and they're all done then we can start working on your fiber or what's it what's another good one oh we're gonna pull cable along the telephone poles but the telephone poles have trees next to them which means we need to have the arborist from the county on-site as we trim the tree branches to pull the cables to make sure that we're not damaging the trees no joke I've had this happen well okay great when can the arborist get out well one's on leave the others booked for 9 months so we can schedule the work for you in 9 months when they're available or if something happens so we can get to you sooner we'll schedule it sooner like what do you do you dummy you don't do anything you wait until the arborist is available this is why I say anybody is promising you something in the process they're just lying to you because they do not know and there's no way for them to know.
Speaker 1:You just don't know. You don't know until you know. And it depends on a lot of different things. They don't know if the building is gonna allow you to pull cable between the info and your floor. They don't know if the building is gonna try to extract revenue, you know, from an ROE and fees.
Speaker 1:They don't know if the conduit is compromised and has to be replaced with a tree root. They don't know. And you can't know either. Now, there's things that you can do to make this process better for you. Right.
Speaker 1:The things that we do automatically is the provider in the building. Do they have equipment in the building? Does the equipment have capacity on it in the building being in the building and having capacity or 2 different things by the way being in the building means that they're having capacity means they actually have a port they can plug into without placing additional equipment which could trigger all of those other events could trigger a new deal with the building it could deal trigger you know a time delay equipment placement there's a bunch of different things if there's no capacity on the equipment it triggers broadband versus dedicated fiber has a very different provisioning cycle attached to it first off you're not signing a contract you're signing an order form that has terms and conditions attached it that you cannot negotiate the timeline there's no PM assigned on a broadband order like it just goes into a queue and a technician has a queue and when they get their work assignment on their tablet or their phone or their device whatever they're using it says go here and install this thing and they just show up. It's frustrating because you're not gonna get advanced notice.
Speaker 1:You're usually gonna get like, hey, I'm at your building ready to install, you know, the service for you. And you're gonna say, well, okay, great. We'll be right there. You know, it's just it's a frustrating process, but it just is the way that works. That technician's gonna come out.
Speaker 1:They're gonna try to, you know, do the whole work and be done. Broadband can install incredibly fast. We tell people broadband orders, you know, in terms of a timeline will install in under 30 days. The order submission process, order acceptance process is completely different. Like, for instance, our team is actually placing the order with that service provider in their system.
Speaker 1:It doesn't go to a different person for them to do order acceptance like we just enter it like boom you gain a week right like you just gain a week and timeline because it doesn't go through that process so if you've got a new building that you're installing and you have a rush for connectivity requirements we will absolutely 100% order broadband for you and get the broadband circuit come up as the DIA circuits are being provisioned we have some clients like I think we're like it's funny some people it's like you're trying to pull a fast one over on them because you're trying to get them a broadband circuit and it's like you know, we're just gonna cancel it when it's the other ones there. Like, it's what do you want here? Yeah. It's not gonna be as good, but at least you have connectivity. You can get your network network stack up and running.
Speaker 1:Yeah. You have to reconfigure your firewall with new IP addresses when you cut over to it. And that's a drag. But you know what? Like, use use an SD WAN and don't have the impact it's not that big of a deal what else should we talk about here for a second I like our Bock versus C lack versus MSO if you don't know those acronyms incumbent local exchange carrier also known as the regional Bell operating company this is the actual phone company that has the territory where your location is so I like our our box the Ilex the our box are contracting out a lot of this process to third parties and they're doing that for costs if they did it in house it's expensive for them it's union it's got a lot of complexity to it there's a lot of legal requirements that they have for it so how do you get around that you eradicate the positions and you go to a third parties what does that cause for you causes all sorts of other problems so in the ILEC and our Bach worlds you have where the big ones right your big ones that you know in the United States are AT and T Verizon now it's called you know Lumen so what was CenturyLink and in some markets what was quest before that we have frontier you know we have these entities now I will tell you that they're not all the same in terms of how long they take the provision some are much faster than others they all have annoying processes but if you are in AT and T territory versus Lumen territory versus Verizon territory versus frontier territory you're gonna have very different experiences and by the way if you're using a phone company and you're ordering circuits out of that phone company's market you are adding time to your installation because that phone company is gonna go and do what's called type 2 service they're gonna take and order the loop and the capacity from the actual phone company that's in that market so then you're dealing with 2 phone companies and provisioning so you've got to deal with the one that you've ordered with and then you've got to also deal with the one that they've ordered with in order to get the service installed that can create all sorts of permutations and variables in terms of like timelines you know some quirky things Lumen is operating a bunch of different networks at this point so depending what product you order and what network that product isn't related to you're gonna have a very you know like ordering an EPL circuit which was legacy CenturyLink very different experience and if you're ordering you know an orange or red network from what was level 3 or TW Telecom and a big like hint here is if you're ordering with Lumen is understanding like maybe what you do is you just order one type of network circuit from you know capacity that's in that building and you replace it again we talked about this replacement earlier the trick here is understand what you're getting into and are you dealing with CenturyLink LEC or you're dealing with the level 3 wholesale you know wholesale is the easiest way to express it you know side of the house he's like legacy level 3 assets Lumen no longer does fiber extensions for a lot of their locations this creates a problem for some people and you know why don't they not do fiber extensions it's expensive and it's a pain in the butt so they stopped they don't do it anymore you have to do your own fiber extension or you have to pay them a small fortune for them to do the fiber extension for you and lose the time just have your low voltage contractor do the fiber extension for you it's not a big deal and by the way it's faster because you call them up they show up and they install it you don't have to go through like 15 layers bureaucracy in order to get it done you know Verizon has a very special provisioning process frontier good luck you know like it's just you know they are what they are cable companies for as much flack as they get and as you know not good as their broadband circuits are they install really fast cable companies as an aggregate like go across the board install really fast spectrum Comcast Cox like you can hate their broadband product because of the way the network architecture works and capacity issues with it but guess what it installs really fast so the name of the game here becomes redundancy and having different carriers and different providers with different access mechanisms into the building working in concert with a good SD WAN to have the best experience circling all the way back to the beginning right like how long does this take?
Speaker 1:I don't know. Well, anybody who tries to tell you that they know just doesn't know because anybody that's been doing this for amount of time and has any amount of installations under their belt is just the permutations of weird things that we you see is just they're gonna tell you like oh you know it's probably gonna take like 45 days right like they're gonna do everything they can to get it done faster we're gonna do everything we can to get installed for you faster I mean just think about it like the faster we get installed we don't have to deal with it anymore of course you want to get installed as fast as possible the trick there becomes until you actually start the project all you have is you have an estimate and once you start the project and you start looking at the things and you actually understand what you actually are dealing with and then you can start figuring out what you're working with there's some things and I won't go deeper into this but some providers just install faster than others some providers have better processes than others some providers have crazier things than others so I will tell you if we're working on a project together and trying to get connectivity and you know a fiber install in your building part of our recommendation stack that we're gonna give you is going to be based on how quickly and how sane that provider is going to be for you to get you service I'm Max Clark I hope this helps you if you have questions please comment below send me an email and we'll walk you through it and help you as much as we can
