Fast Internet Stand up Options

The only answers are 4G/5G and whatever broadband service is most readily available at the street address / building suite.

But all of those are reactionary "thoughts & prayers" for a broken business model.

If you are lucky, and the new location is a suite in a high-rise that is turned-up and loaded for bear with one of your preferred providers, it's going to take about 30 days of paperwork to get a circuit lit up.

If you are not lucky, and the new location is a free-standing building with no existing telco presence, then you're looking at 100 days and up to $50,000 of installation charges to get connectivity.

These realities need to be communicated and agreed upon with your real estate / business development team(s).

A carrier scouting report is a service offered by several players who can tell you if a street address is "on net" for a specific carrier. You might recommend that such a scouting report be a standard component of their location selection.

If you are going to be the very first tenant in a building that requests "adult" DIA connectivity (as opposed to broadband) those NRC construction charges are not insignificant. It might cost $50k to pay your preferred carrier to drag their fiber into the location, and that construction takes time...

That $50k needs to become a business operations expense for choosing the location, and not an IT expense for needing bandwidth from a grown-up carrier.

Comcast/Cox/Time-Warner broadband is a great value, but if you need a real SLA then you need a real SLA.

Two options:

1. hire a 3rd party aggregator who can qualify and order broadband/fiber services from any provider. Upside is one bill, one relationship, downside is higher upfront cost and ordering isn’t always as quick

2. Develop relationships with reps from each major ISP - Verizon, Comcast, Spectrum, ATT - and every time you need internet for a new building,send an email to those reps with the address, and ask for speeds available, pricing, time frame. This system can work really well if you have good, reliable reps who answer quickly and will see things through.

Regardless of the internet options available and timeframe, i would always immediately order a hotspot for a new location for backup. Choose one major cellular provider with the best coverage and the most reliable rep to use for this.

I've dealt with this quite a lot having opened a couple hundred offices all across the country. it's entirely a matter of setting expectations.

Assuming you are not causing delays on things you are in control of (getting an order placed, scheduling your equipment to out there, etc) then you are dealing with providers who, frankly, don't care about your timeline.

If you're using broadband services as your typical option, then you can't make them install faster than they have scheduling slots. If you're dealing with enterprise services, you can sometimes write checks to get bumped up in the processing queue, but you're still going to be longer lead times than broadband.

The business needs to involve you as soon as they are even thinking about a new location, not when they signed a lease (or after). That's just so you know what is going on and can get some prep work out of the way. It's highly unlikely the business wants you to order service prior to a lease being signed, and it's even more unlikely the landlord will allow an install until a lease is signed. Sometimes it may work out to get this going in advance of the lease, but it's risky because the deal could fall apart, and if the service you are using is contracted, you have to contend with that. Most broadband contracted services offer 30 day out/money back, so you have some buffer there.

Even with all of that being said, the bottom line is that you are at the mercy of other companies, with zero leverage over them, so it's your business that needs to adjust to reality. Providing a cellular modem is pretty much your only option to have something immediately available. That could be in the form of a hotspot, CradlePoint/similar router with built in or add-on celluar, or if you do company provided cell phones, have people using their phone hotspot for their individual computer. What is viable in that situation will be dictated by your network requirements. The best option out of these would be a version of your preferred firewall/router that can also run an LTE modem (usually USB connected), then you don't have to swap equipment after the fact when ISP is up. Can even leave the LTE modem there as a failover, or have it shipped back to you for future use.

Cradlepoint or something similar.

The business needs to know that ISP's generally have a 30-90 day lead time; whoever is head of IT needs to make that the reason why IT needs to be a part of new site roll-outs from the get-go.

wireless ISPs can typically move pretty quick. They have gotten me out of a bind.

http://wisptools.net/wispdirectory.php

There is typically a survey, they come out and check the signal. There is an install fee, and a monthly fee. The one I delt with, took 4 days.

You do need roof access and a penetration for the cable.

I don't have an easy solution, but telling us your location(s) might help people give good answers.

We're doing LTE routers where service is available

There's no better option at the current time, generally speaking. In a few years, low-orbit satellite may be an option in some areas for bridge service, but that's not the case today. Traditional geosynchronous satellite isn't particularly functional for TCP/IP connections due to very high latency.

Presumably you've considered DOCSIS, PON, and *DSL services in addition to dedicated local loops.

Sounds like LTE is what you need to focus on. THat's what we do.

We have a bunch of floater cradlepoints that are used specifically for this purpose. While we wait for the ISP install we turn up the site on the Cradlepoint, often it stays as the secondary failover ISP line for the office once the traditional line is in.