wholesalers/resellers and end customers plenty of notice to review options and implement migration plans. Some carriers do this expertly with six to nine months’ notice. They offer alternatives, or – if they plan to decommission with no alternative service – at least they provide quick feedback and give the user enough time to seek alternative solutions. Some gradually raise rates to compel the wholesaler/ reseller or end customer to seek alternative less costly solutions. The wrong way is to give short notice, impose huge rate increases or announce service decommissioning within timeframes they themselves could not internally process. This practice burns the relationship with resellers and destroys the brand with agents and end customers. Maybe they should transition to selling non-stick paint or some other worthless product, because that behavior has no future in our industry. Resellers must provide their customers with solutions to a carrier ’s decommissioning of service. Partners and customers accept that change happens, but they want a timely solution. They want to know that the migration to another service will be project-managed with little-to-no downtime, as well as being an improvement on the old service. That’s where a capable reseller comes in. First, they can quote solutions from all access providers to a given location. They can evaluate the best options and present to the partner and customer both the decommissioning announcement with option solutions in hand. In other words, here is the problem and the solution at the same time. Migrations involving voice services have additional steps that have to be carefully coordinated with the customer, their phone system vendor and the underlying carriers on both ends of the process. If the service is POTS, options could be VoIP, cable POTS or wireless POTS. New services have to be installed and tested, then port dates established, then existing numbers ported to new services, then tested again. Once all is tested and completed, the disconnection of the old service can be processed. TDM-based PRIs can be replaced by a SIP/VoIP option following a similar process of identifying an access method such as broadband, installing the service and related CPE and working with the customer and their vendor to install and test the new service. Then they must set and manage the porting of existing numbers/DIDs to the new service. If the testing checks out, then, with the customer’s approval, a disconnection order is initiated on the old service. If all goes well and facilities are available, then POTS replacement can take place. This traditionally occurs in 30 to 45 business days, once the order paperwork has been submitted and approved – faster with wireless POTS, but disconnection of the older service can take up to 10 weeks depending on the backlog of the carrier. Billing can take a few cycles to work its way clean. If facilities are available, then the PRI migration process is similar. Lack of facilities and customers’ delaying the process can extend the migration by months. Internet-related migrations don’t require porting of numbers, but they do require local access such as copper, broadband or fiber, plus new IPs that must be programmed into the customer’s LAN. Without substantial notice, the process does not work. Partners expect the carrier or reseller to manage decommissioning and migrations without causing the customer undue stress or blaming the partner for having to go through a painful migration. The good news is, chances are voice customers will get substantially lower rates and increased functionality. Internet and data customers will get greater bandwidth at much lower rates. Additional buying opportunities could also be derived from this process by communicating with the customer and recommending services such as wireless backup, managed security, UCaaS, etc. From a customer perspective, this is another imposition on an already busy, multi-tasking schedule. If they work on the IT side of their business, then they are used to obsolescence, upgrades and migrations, some of which don’t go well. Service providers and partners must work closely with the customer to overcome their concerns. Those issues take on a new level when the network scheduled for decommissioning is used by a hospital, police, fire or some other mission-critical service that calls for careful management of the migration. Service providers and partners must approach the customer from the perspective that unlike the normal selling process this migration is being imposed upon them. It’s our job as service providers and partners to turn this lemon into lemonade. o Glen Nelson is a 40 year veteran of the telecommunications industry and is co-founder, VP marketing & business development at NHC, The Communications Stack Provider and one of the largest partner-exclusive network resellers in North America. CORE COMMUNICATIONS 82 CHANNELV ISION | MARCH - APRIL 2023
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