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bbwithdrawls
join:2008-08-30
Vanleer, TN

bbwithdrawls

Member

SLA question , Does not include Fiber lines that have been cut ??

Hello All

I have an existing T1 connection through a company that many use on here . The local carrier is ATT. I have had this T1 provider for over 4 years . If I have issues the call center is OUTSTANDING , They will make ATT jump through hoops to get it fixed and are on top of it.Because of the rural nature of this location I do put in for credit on my service according to the SLA occasionally when I have downtime

To request credit according to the SLA is a long drawn out process, it takes 45- 60 days to get the credit applied, in the meantime the collections department is calling

Recently I put in for one where I had 3 solid days of downtime , SLA is 16 hours and above 100%

Now they are pushing back stating that fiber cuts are not covered by SLA and offering me a credit of 12.00 per day , I am furious . If I cut it i would understand , but this is happening miles down the road

The SLA document I have does not list or have exceptions for fiber cuts , I cannot believe that a mission critical business line has a exception like this, has anyone every heard of something like this ?

If I had choices I would have changed companies a long time ago , my only option is a T1 or satellite which i cannot live with , I'm about to change providers but I'm wondering if that's what this is about , they no longer want me as a customer because I submit a request for credit when I have downtime, its all infrastructure related and not something I do or my equipment , I haven't been hard to get along with but I will stand my ground
CommQuotes
Premium Member
join:2012-02-01
Washington, DC

CommQuotes

Premium Member

Unfortunately fiber cuts are not covered by most SLA's as they are considered "force majeure" or "out of their control". This would likely be true regardless of which carrier provides your T1 as the SLA will likely ride AT&T (and they don't cover cuts). Your SLA should list the non covered events however.

I agree it's a bit of cop out as 9 times out of 10, when one of our clients has an outage, carrier gives "fiber cut" as RFO "reason for outage". That's no surprise... And that's the same story for all of our 250+ carrier / ISP partners.

So I would not take it personally, SLA's are not really worth a whole lot. It's great they are giving you anything.

To your point on businesses and mission critical applications - most businesses that cannot afford any downtime will provision a secondary, diverse backup circuit with failover to protect the network.

That's the only real way to protect yourself against an outage.