Frequently Asked Questions
Absolutely! We encourage all potential clients to first take us for a test drive. We recommend a three-month Pilot Project in which we can become familiar with your network and you can become familiar with our systems and abilities.
As a telecommunications provider ourselves, our NOC staff are accustomed to trouble shooting our own network and do the same for many of our clients. The level of troubleshooting varies by client and usually increases over time as we become more familiar with each other.
Although we are happy to assist with calls from other carriers, enterprise or high-profile customers regarding network availability, we don’t offer technical support for residential / small business owned network equipment, PCs or servers. This is best left to end user help desk providers.
For us to be of value to our clients or our client’s customers, we must first complete the onboarding process. During the onboarding process, we review proper call handling, alarm response, ticketing, troubleshooting and escalation processes. If these steps are not first completed, we are just an answering service taking calls and dispatching technicians.
Many outsourced NOCs base their pricing on the number of endpoints within the customer’s network. We don’t believe this to be fair to the client or to the provider. I.e.: In comparing two networks with the same number of end points, but one network was poorly engineered and has lots of issues, they would be paying the same rate as a well-engineered network with very few issues. We have developed a pricing model that takes into account network activity. Please see our
NOC Pricing Calculator for more information.
We would like to say we could be operational within a week, but that has just never happened. A realistic timeframe to properly onboard a new NOC client is 3 months or more depending on the level of participation from the client.
- Kickoff meeting to discuss scope of project, assign a Project Manager and schedule follow up calls.
- Configure and Ship Cordell ISD4000 Alarm Collector (ISD) with client provided outside IP address and appropriate MIBs.
- Installation of ISD (Hardware or Virtual Machine) in client’s network.
- Installation of remote PC for client to load applications - NOC staff may need access via LogMeIn.
- Assist client in pointing all SNMP traps/sys logs to ISD
- Begin filtering alarms and rule building
- Assign DID for client to route calls and record customized ACD Greeting
- Develop internal/external contact list.
- Review circuit inventory list if available.
- Review standard ticket structure, including ticket severity and trouble codes
- Review client equipment list
- Develop on call contact list
- Review maintenance calendars
- Review troubleshooting procedures
- Review escalation process
- Complete Sitebook information
- Update client users list for access to dashboards
- Review client systems that NOC will have access to
- Review available network diagrams
- Go Live
Our rate structure can be difficult to understand, but after we have some initial discussion, we can size up your network based on similar clients and can provide some sample billing metrics and references from those clients.