Channeling Change: Top Considerations for Trusted Advisors When Choosing a Carrier

As artificial intelligence (AI) applications and other advancements transform telecommunications networks, the telecom sales channel is also evolving.

The old channel philosophy separated the wholesale channel, the direct sales channel and the indirect sales channel into siloed entities, with most carriers preventing their partners, or trusted advisors (TAs), from selling into existing accounts. However, as networks evolve rapidly to support today’s business demands, a new “conflict-free” approach is emerging to ensure cooperation between internet carriers’ channel partners and sales teams. While the conflict-free model has proven its efficacy in promoting collaboration rather than competition, TAs should keep numerous considerations in mind when choosing a channel partner to maximize the customer opportunities that this newer sales model provides.

Asking the Right Questions When Evaluating a Global Network

As businesses expand globally, customers require network connectivity that reflects the distributed nature of international markets. Network reach is crucial for serving these requirements, helping TAs’ customers accelerate their go-to-market strategies in new regions. However, TAs should ask comprehensive questions when evaluating an internet carrier’s global reach. While a broad footprint is essentially table stakes, how does that footprint perform when routing massive amounts of data traffic? Is that footprint secure? Do all its pieces work harmoniously to maximize capacity, speed and other essential qualities?

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These are key questions that TAs must ask on behalf of their customers, particularly as the telecommunications industry increasingly consolidates. While mergers and acquisitions are becoming more common amid economic uncertainties, they often present challenges to internet carriers, TAs and TAs’ customers. These networks typically constitute a “patchwork” of previously unconnected legacy systems that have been increasingly integrated over the course of decades. This can cause additional management complexities, performance issues, security gaps and other disadvantages that can negatively affect TAs’ relationships with their customers.

Customer Support Teams that Actually Care

We’ve all experienced it. You call your service provider to resolve an outage. You’re transferred to numerous representatives and forced to repeat your issue to each one, with your hopes of resolution seeming bleaker each time you’re handed over to a new agent. This is why internet carriers have developed a bad reputation: Customers feel like they’re being treated as another number in a database instead of as a human with unique challenges. While subpar experiences are frustrating enough for customers working directly with a carrier, speedy customer service is even more critical for TAs whose customers expect fast resolutions with minimal downtime.

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To provide maximum value to their customers and mitigate these challenges, TAs should seek a proven track record of customer service when considering internet carriers. Globally distributed service delivery teams ensure that TAs and their customers can always access support agents who possess a contextual understanding of a customer’s local market, business objectives, chosen connectivity solution and unique technological environment. At its core, the connectivity business is built on human relationships, not just technology. Carrier-level customer service is a vital consideration and will only mount in importance, particularly amid increasing competition from hyperscalers.

SD-WAN vs. MPLS: The Old Is New Again?

While software-defined wide area networks (SD-WANs) have been an oft-hyped solution in recent years, TAs shouldn’t overlook multiprotocol label switching (MPLS) just yet. Each solution has its benefits and drawbacks, so TAs need to do their research to guide customers to the right choice. Let’s pit “old reliable” against those “magic boxes” so we can better understand these traffic routing approaches.

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Although many may view it as an older solution, MPLS still has its strengths. As content streaming and AI/ML applications demand consistent performance and always-on connectivity to support their real-time functionality, MPLS can provide additional reliability through label-based routing that enables predictable traffic engineering. Since its connections are generally routed over dedicated circuits managed by a carrier, MPLS' isolation from the public Internet tends to make it more optimized for secure, uninterrupted data transfer and resiliency. However, MPLS' dependability can come with a higher price tag, meaning that TAs and their customers must weigh its benefits against their budgetary limitations.

As a virtual solution, SD-WAN provides TAs’ customers with enhanced flexibility, enabling companies to utilize multiple transport options, such as broadband, in place of or in addition to MPLS. This can also make SD-WAN more cost-effective for certain customers. However, SD-WAN can cause performance and security issues by utilizing public Internet connections, potentially impacting the real-time functionality of emerging applications. Since SD-WAN requires customers to manage multiple network connections, it can also create additional complexities if companies lack internal expertise. Due to the various strengths and drawbacks of each choice, TAs can work with their customers to evaluate their performance demands, budget constraints and security needs, helping customers choose the optimal solution based on these key factors.

Education, Careful Consideration and Trust

As with anything in the technology industry, deep research, education and careful consideration are essential in the channel. Many service providers have gone into the channel, but pulled out because they don’t want to pay companies for renewals. So it’s essential for TAs to vet carriers carefully and work with operators that are truly channel-friendly. Aside from education and research, TAs should also prioritize trust in their relationships with internet carriers. Trust becomes even more crucial amid the enhanced collaboration enabled by conflict-free sales models. In addition to fostering trust and transparency, these crucial considerations enable TAs to help their customers make the best connectivity choices. This guidance allows TAs’ customers to achieve digital transformation and harness the power of emerging applications amid rapid shifts in the technology landscape and channel sales models.