We are currently in the process of looking for new connectivity and voice providers for our office, due in most part to long standing issues with the current provider. I have never personally been a big fan of ATX, but the list of things that have been wrong are just overwhelming if you ask me. One of the worst problems that have come to light since I started there was the fact the QoS was never enabled on the Cisco router provided by ATX. The short version being that when you have a VoIP based Voice service that then does a PRI hand-off, having your Voice traffic prioritized is a very important facet of the equation.

Amazingly enough, since I called and requested that they confirm that QoS was enabled, and after looking into it and realizing it hadn’t been, there hasn’t been a single complaint as to the quality of calls, or dropped connections. Even with this revelation, it isn’t enough to save the relationship we have with ATX, and I have been looking to find a new provider of services to our office.

Enter the four contestants currently engaged in vying for our business. All of which have been very different with regards to their interactions with us, and frankly I find the diversity in this very interesting. Ranging from not calling me back, to trying to come up with any possible solution they can come up with to try and meet what they feel are our needs.

The Contenders

• Cavalier Telephone – Having done a good bit of business and establishing a good relationship with a Cavalier Account Executive in the past I gave her a couple phone calls over the course of the past three weeks and have yet to hear back from her. Some people might look at me funny, but I personally haven’t ever had a bad experience with CavTel, so the fact that I haven’t heard back from the Account Executive hurts my feelings. With her help I have been able to bring services to clients that previously had been sharing a dial-up connection for less than they were paying previously. Unfortunately for them, at this point they are completely out of the running, simply because my Account Executive that I had been working with won’t return my calls.
• CDW – Our Company does tons of business with CDW. All customer equipment is ordered through them, so they go well out of their way to please us. I mentioned one day that we were having issues with ATX, and our Account Executive mentioned they have a team dedicated to helping people find new service. We got a fairly competitive quote through Paetec with CDW, but after finding out about some other services offered in our area, we went back to them, and they brought XO to the table as well. They’ve been extremely responsive, worked well to try and find us our ideal service, and been there to ask questions.
• Comcast – Comcast isn’t really vying for our business, so much as working not to screw up earning our business. Our firewall does Load Balancing and failover, and frankly, I don’t know of anywhere else to get a 8MB/1MB connection for under a $100 a month (not including taxes and fees). So basically, as long as Comcast doesn’t do anything stupid, they’ll be working with us as our secondary internet provider. Currently they are scheduled to come out this coming week for a site survey to ensure that our building has Comcast currently installed, which shouldn’t be an issue, since I know of at least one other tenant in our building that has Comcast currently. The account rep said she’d call me back after the site survey was completed, only time will tell.
• Datapoint – An old local Baltimore throw back, once known as Toad.net. I received an unsolicited phone call from them the other day with information regarding Metro Ethernet availability in our area. Basically, they are serving the Towson area with Ethernet directly to the office. With a price per megabyte that simply crushes the T1 and NxT1 options we’ve been given so far, and scalability past 45MB, I was personally sold right there. The Account Rep that called was professional, knowledgeable, sent the quote when he said he would, and best of all, said “Please call me if you like what you see, hope to hear from you soon”. It’s rare that you can find a company that will just let their product sell itself, but when you do it is so refreshing.

Through all this, I have simply found the vast differences in the ways the companies have responded to our requests for pricing and information both intriguing and amusing. I just find the breadth of how four different companies can approach the same problem an amazing thing.

In the end, we are probably going to be going with a hybrid of connections with Datapoint as our primary, Comcast as our backup and some form of service through Paetec for the voice. I know vendors all want to be your sole source for everything, but shopping and building your own sometimes provides with much more robust results. With talk of probably getting a good 5MB connection through Datapoint and the Comcast connection, we are going to tremendously increase our bandwidth over our current bonded T1s, and even with the Paetec connection for voice probably pay only another 10% to 20% over what our current bill is through ATX. And the best part of it all, everyone is going to be more productive and happy because our internet will work.