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Choosing a Telecoms Service Provider

By Jonathan Levy

In this article, Jonathan Levy of Class Telecommunications suggests some important questions for your prospective telecoms service providers to ensure you’re getting the best option for your organisation

When looking to contract with a supplier you want to be sure they are experts in their field and you can trust them, this is especially true when it comes to choosing a telecoms service provider. Getting answers to the following the questions will help you.  

Endorsements

What industry bodies recognise or endorse the service provider and for how long.

Reference customers

Consider the number and range of reference customers a service provider has, 2 or 3 is normal, 20 or 30 is better. 

Financial status

Are they solvent, how does their credit rating compare? If they go bust where does that leave you?

Accreditations

Is the service provider an accredited partner with recognised manufactures.  This is especially important if you're buying a telephone system.

Ofcom Registered

If they are, they will have a code of practice and a disputes procedure accepted by Ofcom. If they are a member of an ombudsman scheme you’ll have a means to sort out disagreements should any arise.

Suppliers

Who are their suppliers and how long have they used them. Single product service providers will only have one solution regardless of the customer's requirement or need.

Customer Service

You don’t experience this until after you’ve signed the contract.  A simple search on the internet and Ofcom site will let you know what other organisations experience has been.

Contracts & Pricing

Is the contract and their pricing clear and open or is there small print and hidden costs. There are some specific questions to ask here. 

Contracts

Always get a copy of the Terms and Conditions, you should have read them or a summary before signing.

Get the service provider to explain theirs and your service obligations and rights, in particular:

• How can they change prices and if they do what rights do you have?
• In what ways can the contract be terminated?
• If terminated, what penalties apply?
• What’s the contract period and how is the contract renewed?
• What’s the notice period? – be careful with rolling contracts

Always get things in writing, it will help with any disputes in the future and ensures the knowledge doesn’t walk out the door when your staff change.

Pricing

Everything is in the presentation, so if a deal sounds to good to be true, you’re probably missing some key details, so always ask for a full set of tariffs. 

Ideally you need to know what your call profile is. How many calls you make? the type and duration?  As a rule of thumb, just under half your calls will go to mobiles. Your average call duration will be just under 2 minutes to a mobile and just over 2 minutes to a land line. 25% of your calls will be under a minute and 90% of your calls under 3 minutes.  

The quoted pence per minute rate will not necessarily be what you will actually pay for a call. You need to know how calls will be rounded in terms of time and money. As an example, individual calls could be rounded to the nearest minute and then rounded again to the nearest penny.   

To illustrate this, you may have been quoted a rate of 1.1p per minute for making local calls and could naturally think you should be charged just over half a pence for a 30 second call. Applying the above rounding policy would in fact mean you were charged 2p for the call, a staggering 400% more than you may have expected. 

You also must understand what call connection charges or minimum call charges that will apply to different call types.  The capped rate or bundle you’ve been offered may not be the great deal it first appeared to be. 

More often than not, greater value for money or straight forward cost savings are achieved through smarter use and management of your telecoms services.  So choosing the right service provider will have a greater impact on your organisation’s performance than just choosing the lowest pence per minute rate.