IT and telco services

What does IT organizations, travelers and mobile workers or teleworkers mean with telco services? Business. As we have been saying, IT, as with native telco services, facilitates businesses. An enterprise and its IT practitioner can lease or subscribe for a connection via telco, mostly, but that's not all a telco can do nowadays. A bundled internet, telephony and business applications are already being offered instead.

The experience we encounter every time we connect would tell us what conditions and the kind of telecommunication's services we have.

Telecommunications services differ from one country to another, mostly due to business practices and regulations and the people behind them. This very factors create the true character of a team or organization and passion within that makes up a service worthy of replication by other others.

Everywhere there is no difference on the technology being employed. 3GPP, ITU and ISO to name a few are organizations that cause the development of which it composed and approved international standards and so almost everything about telecommunications services are built within these mechanisms. They now include the popular 4G, and its different implementations in LTE and WIMAX technologies. There are also CDMA, TDMA and the development is only going strong.

The next development in telecommunication is that, accordingly, 5G is revolutionary and few countries have begun rolling out their infrastructure. Here comes the realization of IoT and M2M environment and a truly hyperexperience for humans, robots and their slaves.

Would your telco be giving out an all-in 5G experience for each connection or subscription in this technology? Time will tell. 5G-capable device end-to-end necessary unless some of it will be backward compatible with 4G.

If telco technologies are based on international standards and being applied properly, shouldn't that create an equal satisfactory experience whichever telco you are in? Absolutely. Then why and what is happening when the experience turns to be problematic? It could be within their business practices itself. We said every business is unique and they are run by different people which also were educated in varying ways. Their understanding of good and bad are also different. There are those who are adventurous that they cannot even justify their own actions. Cannot or does not want to say anything to the customers. But businesses, as long as they are making money, they wouldn't want to correct anything even if those translate to the detriment of customer satisfaction. At least not all seemed to have experienced it yet.   

Just like any enterprise, telco processes, algorithms, practices and decisions are at best prejudicial to the benefit of the benefit of making money. And in business it's about making money. They make sure they win at all cost or file bankruptcy. Of course, the reason from them and also the government would be, people would be starved, economy is bad, et al. It could also mean they haven't discovered what a sustainable service is for their business and their customers.

If you find a telco that puts customers first stay with them. Begin observing how consistent they are as against the value of the services being provided to you and paid by you.

Telecommunications services include private circuit, leased line (before the most popular for business would start at T1/E1 or with flexible speeds with serial and private circuit), DSL and mobile/4G/SIM-based connections. They were connected and wired via copper (telephone lines and cable), fiber (it's getting everywhere nowadays) and wireless such as radio (mobile, microwave and satellite--though this is not much for data).

An IT organization would simply subscribe for DSL, leased line or 4G or combination of all of the above depending on their size and operational requirements. Have the telco enable the service and the organization's technical staff can do whatever they want to the connection, say interconnecting their geographically separated offices and creating a private network dedicated for them, to serve their business.

For leased line and private circuit it does not have much issue after setup, the same thing for DSL and mobile if done properly end-to-end. Problems can be seen however if it does improperly including erratic last mile conduits, sabotage, counterfeit or disposable devices, lax configuration and telcos own migration activities--this happened often leaving customers without good IT people to wonder and agonize until it is coordinated to the telco about their issues or problematic connection. Who did and how the coordination happen isn't even clear. Most of the time telco doesn't seem to be on top of their after sales. It's due to their customer support practices that's transforming their human representatives into robots.

Also it may be that it's not their practice to tell things subtle to, or not being asked by, the customers. Even if it concern them. The sales are on those eyes and not much how good the service are going to be. Besides business or sales people have their own objectives and that is for the most part not very clear to the technical people. Their work results in an incoherent manner.

There are times when customers are calling forever and still being ignored completely. Billing, despite problems aren't adjusted. Even when they had been communicated and already encountering problems. Take note and keep proofs for this and show them if you will later find discrepancy in your billing and payments.

For prepaid users, it's bad, the load is gone and no way they can get a refund. For postpaid users, at least, charges can be contested. But still one needs to have a watchful eye and be conscious in their usage.

These problems are solvable. Only if their robots understand each other. They use the same language but they speak at different frequency. Their robots wouldn't see or have no initiative to do more than what they have been programmed to do but the people who scrutinize would. Nowadays, you need to demand that you are attended to by humans.

One must ask, technology savvy individual can do it but it's the IT practitioner that knows more and can addressed concerns once and for all. It must be effective and efficient. No further waste of time and resources.

Connections' bandwidth also differs

-Leased line - 1-to-1, a 2MB would give you the same download and upload speed. The connection is not shared and is for the subscriber's consumption only.

-Private circuit, same as above but would only connect two or more geographically separated branches to HQ sometimes without connection to the Internet.

-DSL, shared connections within an area or community. Check the minimum committed bandwidth. Mostly, a 2MB subscription would be given 128kB committed speed.

-4G/LTE and pre-5G, how fast or slow? The answer varies. A good spot gets congested always. People go there. Sometimes the good spot become poor and the poor become good. Looks like the radio is being turned upside down. You move, you get disconnected and reconnected. Erratic. It has never been stable and reliability might be at 60-70%.

Caveat, download and upload speeds, regardless of the connection type, are mostly dependent on the telco. They can change this at their whims. Let's hope that this will be checked by consumer services department from the government.

Wired, copper, fiber, wireless, mobile or satellite must not be discriminated upon. They don't matter much. It's the bandwidth and reliability that will.

The contract provided by the telco says everything what you can expect with the service. Beware of the service level agreement, rebate or adjustment to the billing if reported downtime will reduce payments and the length of the contract that one must finish. Customers can sometimes negotiate for shorter service but still the fine print would be final once signed by all parties.

An IT organization wouldn't have much problem when it comes to finding a connection for their business. They can choose which is applicable to their situations. The requirement is better done with telco and their capacity to provide stable connection. IT can deal straight with the telco if problem occurs or if service continue to be erratic that very same period a connection is being established.

Data, voice especially cross-provider connection are all congested. There is a solution here but may need regulators to look at it deeper. Public services must not be giving any continuing problem, should not give problem, must operate strategically and most important of all is it can, if not yet keep trying to, win customers trust.

One way of another we looked up to the customers for profit. Taking care of them is the best thing to do when no competition seem to challenge the market share. Taking care means providing the best experience with the service. Within an organization, an IT lead, may get fired if business systems are not performing well. In a business, a customer can easily leave if fed up, but only, if there's much options out there.