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For businesses planning to upgrade their network into their business’ existing infrastructure should also be thinking about the future.

 

Usually, when an existing company is planning to implement a MPLS network, it’s to replace an older network for its emails and data content and upgrading it so that it can support voice traffic and video conferencing for the future as it becomes appropriate, said Ken Mercer, senior vice president of Telecom Brokerage, Inc. (TBI).

 

For companies who may be looking to upgrade their networks, a master agent like TBI can help. Mercer told TMCnet that TBI “has always done the heavy lifting for the agents. When the agents come to us and have specifications and parameters that are outside of the box that are just not a normal product, we hunt them down through all of our carriers and make sure the carriers abide by those specifications for the agent.

 

Having the work done for a company is a huge added value. “So whether it is qualifying for certain specifications, certain footprints, certain technologies, we definitely abide by what the agent is asking for and their requirements and a lot of that is going to be quality vs. price,” Mercer said.

 

For example, Mercer said, TBI has been encountering with some financial companies— due to financial regulations and transactions speeds that have to be done—a lot of companies that come to them are asking for not just a MPLS connection from Los Angeles to Chicago but also for a connection speed that is less then 10 milliseconds of latency. Mercer said that, “that’s becoming a big qualifier in a lot of requests for quotes now.”

 

Companies looking to enhance their network are now looking for quality instead of basing their purchase on price. He says that companies are thinking about how much downtime the company could afford or how much revenue it would lose if its customers couldn’t place orders, or customers couldn’t communicate with the company. Or even worse, if any of its employees couldn’t do their job because of a slow network.

 

Another example Mercer gives is the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME). Because of new financial regulations that state that it has to have a certain latency of seven milliseconds or less of latency per transactional trade and it can only be located into one location in Chicago, the CME has to have a network connection that is only in one location in Chicago under a time limit to even participate in a certain type of trade that they are trying to do.

 

“People in New York that want to take advantage of this transactional trade with Chicago Mercantile Exchange have to buy a certain connection from a carrier that will qualify for all of those high quality needs that can only go into one location in Chicago. This is a great example of TBI doing all the footwork with the carriers that are available to help that New York customer that wants to do those transactions with the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME),” Mercer states.

 

“It’s not about, I need the cheapest network from here to there, but it’s the need for guaranteed uptime and the fastest network. That’s becoming the decision factor for a lot of sales that are being done right now, which is a new trend. Before the question for companies used to be, how much money we can save, but now companies are looking at the bigger picture,” said Mercer.

 

He continued, “As quality becomes more important and regulations need to be followed for certain certifications for the financial industry or for the healthcare industry, as technologies come across for voice or video, savvy customers will ask for a test first and if the carriers past the test then they’ll move onto the next round rather then, this one is the cheapest, let’s sign a contract.”

 

Mercer adds that “if a customer is putting in a WAN with MPLS and they have the hopes of using time sensitive applications in the future, whether it be voice of video for example, and are currently only using the network for email and Internet, they are going to have to be prepared to see that the network will be able to handle those latency sensitive applications in the future.”

 

For companies who are “connecting a bunch of office for Internet and email today, and are hoping to run voice traffic over the network in the future have to think ahead before processing that network.” Mercer emphasizes. “It may not be the cheapest network in the world but it’ll work better in the long-run by thinking ahead and TBI can help companies find the best product do this.”

 

Learn more about master agent TBI by visiting their Website or check out their Master Agent channel here on TMCnet.