Ordering Telecommunication Circuits

Regardless of your startup you need connectivity

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The method to connect your offices and data centers relies on various telecommunication companies. While the brand name carriers are known in the retail space, Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile, the business environment has a variety of providers to choose from as well. This includes Fiberlight, Century Link, and other smaller resellers. Regardless of your provider, establishing the circuit from one office to another requires at least one carrier and then the carrier that finishes delivering the circuit to your office location. For additional information about carriers, check out this great article from the leading Venture Capitalist, Fred Wilson: Underground Infrastructure

IF YOU ONLY READ ONE THING IN THIS ARTICLE, you should plan for 150 BUSINESS DAYS to order, receive, and be able to use a telecommunication circuit. This duration becomes important when you are moving the data center or building a new office location. You need this connectivity before any of your users occupy the facility. I have first-hand experience with circuits taking 150 days to install from the carrier. Feel free to contact me if you need help convincing somebody that it takes a long time.

To speed the delivery of a circuit, many executives will ask to invoke the Telecommunication Service Provider program. The “telecommunications Service Priority (TSP) is a program that authorizes national security and emergency preparedness (NS/EP) organizations to receive priority treatment for vital voice and data circuits. The TSP program provides service vendors a Federal Communications Commission mandate to prioritize requests by identifying those services critical to NS/EP. A TSP assignment ensures that it will receive priority attention by the service vendor before any non-TSP service.” This program WILL NOT speed the initial delivery of the circuit. It may help you with restoring service. Do not use this service to offset your failure to order the circuit hundreds of days in advance.

On more than one occasion during data center moves or office buildouts, some executives will claim that we can order satellite or use a cable service for a temporary solution. These solutions can also require 150 days of build-out to your facility since you are in a commercial space.

The following items should be in your requirements to the vendor to order a circuit:

1. Specify the exact room location and rack where you want the circuit terminated.
2. Specify the “hand-off” that will be delivered. The choices for this are multi-mode or single-mode. Your networking equipment will have a specific connector to accept the handoff
3. Letter of Authorization. This is a letter from your telecommunication carrier that you will need to deliver to your data center manager. This letter allows your data center manager to plug in the telecommunication circuit into your equipment. It can be thought of as the “Get Out Of Jail Free Card” that if you plug it in and something goes wrong on the carrier network, then it is not your fault. Your data center manager could be internal or a 3rd party hosting company will need this letter. The letter should have the following characteristics: Your Customer Name, The Contact At Your Company, The type of circuit ordered, The carrier circuit ID number, The address where the circuit plugs into, The floor and cage location where the vendor dropped of the circuit, verbiage that states that it is OK for you to plug in the circuit to your equipment.
4. Turnover Document. The carrier should provide a turnover document that specifies everything about the circuit. The fields in the letter should include Circuit ID, Circuit Type, Contact at your data center, Source Address, Destination Address, Circuit ID, Room and Rack Location of each circuit, and carrier customer service numbers for support. This document should be entered into your ServiceNow or carrier database to allow your Network Operations Center visibility into the circuit for future issues.

Once you have received the LOA and the circuit, you can commence plugging in the circuit to your equipment and connect your office or new data center!