Spare me your verbal promises, put it in an SLA.

We've all heard it.  "Our network has 99.999% up-time  or "we respond to troubles day or night," but in the end what good do those words do us?

They all mean well and no doubt they believe it but any assertion made by a telecom provider should be backed up by a Service Level Agreement (SLA) that demonstrates consequences when those promises are not kept. 

At Stellis we make sure our clients have SLAs with teeth.  For example, one of our carrier partners offers global commitments that are very aggressive for reduced jitter and latency.  For companies running global private networks with converged voice, video and data these commitments are a critical.  A provider's network might be clean and well balanced today, but what keeps them honest?  How can you be sure they won't oversubscribe and have the service you initially singed up for degraded each time they acquire new clients?   SLAs make providers stay true to their word and it helps protect you for the long term.