Suffering stress over your new telecoms office move?
Retaining your existing numbers is possibly the least of your worries for your telecoms office move!
Planning an office move can be an exciting but fraught process. There are many steps to consider, employees, lease negotiations, planning of technical requirements, parking, the telecoms system office move and furniture installation.
Internet Connectivity and telephony infrastructure are key issues for your organisation; without connection to the internet and with no emails, or the phones not ringing you can’t conduct your business.
Check out these useful telecoms office move considerations:
Check what telecoms services you can have at the building before you sign for the potential new premises. Poor quality broadband may be the reason that someone has previously left the building. Let Juno check the address for you well in advance. All that we require is a valid Post Code. We will make sure the new premises has a valid address on Openreach, Virgin or others systems to ensure it’s a known premises on their networks. You will have to leave a lot more time for surveys and construction to be done in the case of a non-valid address e.g. a new Industrial site.
Make sure the Openreach NTTP (Network Test and Termination Point, or sometimes called an NTE) is actually situated inside your planned new office, and not in another part of the building. This can cause challenges at installation time, but also on fault analysis in the future.
Check where the NTTP or NTE (Network Termination Equipment) is in relation to where you are putting your server room and patch panels. Openreach are obligated to fit a line within 3m of the NTTP. If the NTTP is in the wrong place your hardware is going to be too far from the equipment and moving the NTTP could take much longer and incur costs.
Leave adequate lead time prior to the telecoms office move to install the required services to the building. Depending on the ordered services, lead times will vary, with Leased Lines taking typically 45-90 working days unless significant construction activities are required. Standard analogue & digital lines can take 2-5 weeks, and ADSL or FTTC broadband are usually 5-10 working days.
Does your insurance cover you at both your old premises and new premises? Working Redcare (or similar) alarm lines need to be active at either location, or until another tenant moves in your old premises.
Do you have an inventory of what every phone line does in your present business? You will need to replace them or at least consider options at the new site.
Make sure landlords will allow you to cross their land to provide services, the ducts leading to some buildings will silt up over time and new services may require new ducting. Gaining wayleave permissions can add lengthy and unwanted delays to an office move.
Does the building already have working structured cabling? Many buildings do have existing Cat5/6 cabling, however make sure that’s its working, terminates into a server room area in your premises and there are enough internet connections for all staff.
Is the mobile coverage good in the office? Building structures will impact mobile signals. While an operator’s signal might be good in one location it might not be so good at another address, so it is best to check before the telecoms office move.
J is for Juno, who are experts in helping companies with a stress free, seamless telecoms office move, taking into account timelines, previous contracts, new business locations, and the latest and available technologies. Oh and moving those phone numbers is relatively easy these days, with various porting options available.
Don’t forget about remote workers and the impact they may have on your office internet or VOIP phone service, but also what sort of services you might need to provide them at their flexible working location. Lots of remote access to the office servers and systems inside the office can have significant impact on the available broadband bandwidth at the main office location. Its always worth considering growth in this area when provisioning new Leased Lines and trying to decide on the correct bearer speeds.
Perhaps providing them with a 4G router or a Mifi device equipped with a data eSIM covering all 4 UK networks, might enhance the remote experience. Do your employees suffer from mobile phone black spots? Multinet SIMS can get around this issue. The eSIM will always enable devices to connect to the best available mobile network and also allow customers to manually select specific networks. This poor coverage issue can be frustrating at both ends when experiencing dropped video conference calls, or poor quality VoIP calls due to residential broadband services.
How Juno Telecoms can help you with your office move?
Rather than worry with some of the questions above, apply for a free, no obligation, survey of your new premises. We will complete all the important steps above, and make sure you understand the options open to you and warn you of any potential pitfalls. Among the pre move checks we will conduct for you are:
Validate your address on Openreach’s platform.
Check how much spare line plant is available to the building.
Verify phone lines that are active in the premises. We will identify potential stopped lines which would be available for immediate connection.
Identify the specific cable distance from the exchange. This is critical if no fibre is yet available.
Provide a list of access services available e.g. Leased Lines, ADSL2, Fibre Broadband, Ethernet First Mile, and of course analogue, ISDN2 and ISDN30 telephone line connectivity
Conduct an initial inspection of the CAT5/6 cabling and server room suitability
Review whether the premises is with or without an exclusive NTTP
Share with you the phone system options you may have e.g. Use your existing one, an on premise PBX, or a Hosted VOIP solution.
Check the 3G & 4G mobile signals in the building particularly if you are considering 4G data as an option.
Work with your IT company to ensure IP address changes and any specific router requirements are understood in preparation for the move
Map out the expected lead times on all options suggested to ensure you factor them into your overall move.
Assess how you can retain your existing numbers to ensure you don’t miss any calls after a succesfull office move.
