With the deregulation of the telecommunications industry and the imminent explosion of bandwidth to the Irish marketplace, companies are now faced with a number of key decisions regarding their bandwidth requirements.

What does the typical SME or Corporate customer need to consider? Picking up the phone and asking for increased levels of bandwidth may not be the answer. Is your company using their bandwidth in the most effective way? Companies need to have a very proactive bandwidth management policy in place. If not, it will cost them more in either dial up or leased carrier services in the long term.

There are a number of voice and data products available to meet your business requirements. Text, graphics and video can all be transferred electronically. There are a number of different ways of doing this depending on your priorities and business processes. Criteria such as traffic patterns, volumes, frequency, and security issues will help you determine your choice of service.

The first step is to evaluate your bandwidth needs, both now and in the future. If your company lacks in-house expertise in this area, outsource this to an independent bandwidth consultant who will establish your exact requirements. Understanding the new technologies on the horizon, will ensure that you can plan and implement the correct solution at the best possible time. Once you have established your bandwidth requirements, and a short list of delivery methods, you are half way to successfully purchasing the correct bandwidth for your company.

Putting price aside, get a good understanding of the different technologies available to you ISDN? Leased Lines? Frame Relay? BWA? Etc. Understand the benefit and pit falls of each.

A hot issue at the moment is the time for deployment of these services. Typically there is a lead-time of eight to twelve weeks for leased lines. This is considerable, so clear forward planning is required.

Evaluate your carriers on the set-up cost and the annual rental costs separately. Remember, there may be considerable price decreases within your contractual period so factor these in. Establish what the current upgrade prices are. This will give a good indication of costs for your future bandwidth growth. Group all your telecommunications traffic costs to ensure you are getting the best discounts available to you.

Most carriers run their services on a minimum contract of one year. Establish if there are any charges or restrictions for a cessation of the service.

Service level agreements (SLA's) will cover fault detection, fault repair times, customer service issues, billing, and network maintenance etc. Check the fault repair times in the SLA's verses the current actual repair time.

Understanding these core bandwidth procurement issues, and implementing a suitable bandwidth management policy will save your company time and money in the long run.

John O'Grady is a director of Comms-Online "the Market Maker!" for the Communications industry. With dedicated independent consultants for the carrier market amongst others, Comms-Online offer a free service to the SME and Corporate customer to help them make informed decisions on their bandwidth requirements.