We have heard from businesses across the country complaining that their internet connections at home and the office are horrible during the quarantine. Poor internet access is affecting their ability to communicate with customers and be productive while working from home. Salespeople and technicians from competing providers are quick to tell you that if you switch to their service, everything will be better.  However, depending on the CAUSE of your issues, switching providers may not solve the problem. City Communications is here to help you get to the root of your issues and implement a real solution.

What Problems Are You Experiencing?

Internet Bouncing Up and Down

• Check with the provider to make sure they aren't having over-subscription or equipment issues on their end.
• Add a redundant connection such as Cable, DSL, Fiber, Wireless, or whatever is available within your budget and aggregate them together using SD WAN. 
• Check internet connections at every point between where they come in from the provider and where they terminate.  Make sure that the wires are plugged in and connected tightly.  Make sure that there are no kinks, breaks, or places where you cat may have chewed on it.  Intermittent issues are sometimes the result of loose wiring.
• Reboot your modem, router, etc.  Sometimes rebooting equipment can clear issues.
• Once you have eliminated any issues on your end, and the connection is still bad and the carrier isn't able to fix it, then we might need to look at replacing the provider (depending on what options are available).

Poor Call Quality

• Make sure that voice traffic is prioritized over internet traffic and streaming services such as Netflix, Xbox, etc.  We can do this easily using SD WAN.
• Check the quality of the connection including the amount of "jitter" and "latency".  If it is a carrier issue, then we might consider other options or supplementing it with a secondary connection and SD WAN.
• Check with the phone provider to make sure they aren't showing any issues on their side.  It is rare that the hosted VOIP provider is the issue, but it is worth eliminating that as the reason.  If it is part of the problem, we have a number of other options for you to consider.

Poor Video Conferencing 

• Make sure that the video traffic is prioritized after your voice traffic and before all other internet and streaming services.
• Check the quality of the connection including the amount of "jitter" and "latency".  If it is a carrier issue, then we might consider other options or supplementing it with a secondary connection and SD WAN.
• Some of the conferencing services have been performing better during the pandemic than others.  We have access to all of them and can help you get into the right solution.

If you are having any of these issues with your business or work-from-home employees and would like our expert help, schedule a FREE Virtual Meeting below with one of our specialists.  With solutions available from our over 150 providers, we can help you alleviate the issues for good. Contact us today to discuss your situation. 

City Communications can be a resource for dealing with the mandated work-from-home situation that we all face.  Many clients are scrambling around to implement a new strategy or shore up the one that they had in place.  Below are a few of the things that we might be able to help with:
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Video Conferencing Meetings Collaboration
We have a number of stand-alone solutions available including:  Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Hangouts,  If you have (or are interested in) a hosted phone solution, many of them include a conferencing option with the seats. We work with top companies such as:  FluentStream, CityHosted, Nextiva, 8x8, Jive, and many more.  There is a ton of promotions out right now and a lot of support.

Work-from-home Kits
We also have some providers that can provide turnkey solutions to working from home for your employees.  The solutions could include:  mobile wifi devices and plans, tablet devices, laptops, etc.  Even more important is the fact that they can configure them and lock them down so that your employees are only using them for work functions and not other stuff.  They can be pre-configured and dropshipped to your employees for an easy touch-free deployment.  Typically there is a minimum of 25 devices for this type of service.  

Contact Center
We have a number of solutions that would allow you to turn up a new group of agents working from home using their own internet connections while still giving you visibility, reporting, and remote listen and barge capabilities.

Backup and Restore
As we are having more people work from home, it is more critical to make sure that you have your services backed up and that they are easy to restore if you have a user accidentally (or intentionally) delete files.  We have a number of providers that can help you with the configurations and policies necessary to work in a remote environment. 
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Bandwidth for VPN, MPLS, or SD-WAN
If you have an existing solution extending your local network, you may find that it was not built to have 100% of your employees working remotely.  If you need to upgrade your current bandwidth or add additional redundant connections, we can help.


If there is anything else that you are working on that I might be able to help with, please let us know.  We would be happy to help try and run down a solution for you.

So many of us are navigating how to remain working and keep ourselves safe (and do the right thing for the greater society). When face with any of the three significant business impacts of our new working reality, there are numerous technologies and services (sometimes free or low-cost programs) to help you.

1. A sudden shift to remote work. When you allow employees to work from home, you need to provide them with the business communications tools (remote extensions off your business phone system, collaboration tools, file-sharing files, secure remote computing, and desktop video conferencing) they need to do their jobs?
2. A sudden spike in volume. Some businesses - specifically companies with customer service or support call center - are experiencing massive peaks in demand. How do they scale their communications infrastructure to handle new traffic? Do you run your call center on premise-based equipment? How do you expand it? Could you add cloud capacity to expand your agent workforce? Do you need to connect with an outsources? Want to explore automation (self-help IVR and AI tools) that can take some of the load? 
3. Sudden contraction of the business. Unfortunately, the Coronavirus pandemic is going to hurt some companies. And any potential economic downturn or recession could cause us all to take a close look at our expenses. Some of the biggest challenges businesses face in downturns is managing the costs of critical infrastructure while at the same time, maintaining vital service levels. You may need to review contracts, turn down services, change the types of service you use to ones that work better in your new reality.

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We are available to help you.  All of City Communications is available to help you.
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Call us, email us, or request a 30-minute call with us about anything related to your communications, remote-worker, call-center, or expense management concerns. We're here to help.

Call Us at (800) 289-1828
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