UK ISP Lixxus Claims Broadband ISPs Failing Business Voice Users
Posted: 12th May, 2009 By: MarkJ
The Sales Director for UK business ISP Lixxus, Andrew Cooper, has warned that some broadband Internet Service Providers and their accompanying Service Level Agreements (SLA) are letting UK businesses down when it comes to voice services. Confusion over jargon and an inability to test the true performance of the service are apparently two key stumbling blocks:
Lixxus does not provide any comparable examples for their concerns, instead they are running a series of webinars throughout May and June to explain to voice-resellers the pitfalls of buying IP connectivity to replace ISDN for their PBX installations and SIP trunking requirements.
The first webinar will be taking place on Wednesday 27th May 2009. Speakers will include Andrew Cooper, Lixxus Sales Director (previously Sales Director at Claranet UK); and Peter Gradwell, founder and managing director of Gradwell, one of the top three SME business Internet Telephony Service Providers.
Andrew Cooper said: “Services and their accompanying SLAs are letting UK businesses down and this must be addressed, particularly as the demands being made of the network – both to the home and to the office – are increasing and will continue to do so as VoIP and other online applications become increasingly dominant in the UK business marketplace. Customers are within their rights to hold their suppliers to SLA, and at the very least to understand what level of service they are receiving versus what is required”
There is a huge variance between supposedly identical services, particularly within the broadband sector. ADSL contention in particular is one of the least understood considerations out there: terms such as 1:1, 20:1 and 50:1 are at best misleading and at worst dishonest.
Such confusion is not particularly reassuring to companies considering replacing traditional ISDN30 links with SIP telephony, and this is understandable: taking risks with voice communications is not something that any company can afford to do. The good news is that so long as customers know what to look for there is no reason why such a migration should pose any risk whatsoever; it is possible to make ISDN30 a thing of the past and for migration to SIP telephony to be achieved with complete confidence but this will depend completely on the service provider who is being used.
Part of the problem is the seemingly deliberate attempt, particularly by lower-cost Service Providers, to blur the boundaries over what is being sold, typically by producing an apparently impressive SLA. However such companies tend not to produce any means to actually measure what is delivered versus what is promised: this leaves may communications resellers in the dark when it comes to data communications
Historically the only way to solve this has been to invest in complex and expensive monitoring software. This is not helpful. Service providers must provide a transparent SLA and real-time reporting on standardised key metrics such as line performance, latency and packet-loss: only in this way can the validity of the SLA be restored.”
There is a huge variance between supposedly identical services, particularly within the broadband sector. ADSL contention in particular is one of the least understood considerations out there: terms such as 1:1, 20:1 and 50:1 are at best misleading and at worst dishonest.
Such confusion is not particularly reassuring to companies considering replacing traditional ISDN30 links with SIP telephony, and this is understandable: taking risks with voice communications is not something that any company can afford to do. The good news is that so long as customers know what to look for there is no reason why such a migration should pose any risk whatsoever; it is possible to make ISDN30 a thing of the past and for migration to SIP telephony to be achieved with complete confidence but this will depend completely on the service provider who is being used.
Part of the problem is the seemingly deliberate attempt, particularly by lower-cost Service Providers, to blur the boundaries over what is being sold, typically by producing an apparently impressive SLA. However such companies tend not to produce any means to actually measure what is delivered versus what is promised: this leaves may communications resellers in the dark when it comes to data communications
Historically the only way to solve this has been to invest in complex and expensive monitoring software. This is not helpful. Service providers must provide a transparent SLA and real-time reporting on standardised key metrics such as line performance, latency and packet-loss: only in this way can the validity of the SLA be restored.”
Lixxus does not provide any comparable examples for their concerns, instead they are running a series of webinars throughout May and June to explain to voice-resellers the pitfalls of buying IP connectivity to replace ISDN for their PBX installations and SIP trunking requirements.
The first webinar will be taking place on Wednesday 27th May 2009. Speakers will include Andrew Cooper, Lixxus Sales Director (previously Sales Director at Claranet UK); and Peter Gradwell, founder and managing director of Gradwell, one of the top three SME business Internet Telephony Service Providers.
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