Perspective
Provisioning is every ISP's quiet renewal killer — and almost no one has fixed it
The information needed to run a clean leased-line install lives across a dozen parties the provisioning team doesn't control. Here's why that costs renewals — and how to shrink the exposure.
Across the ISPs I've operated, provisioning communication is the single most consistent source of customer dissatisfaction — and almost no operator has solved it structurally.
A single leased line installation can involve more than a dozen people: planner, external engineer, internal engineer, landlord representative, solicitor, router and firewall support, Openreach liaison, reseller account manager, and the end customer. Each holds a piece of the picture. None holds the whole thing.
“Each holds a piece of the picture. None holds the whole thing.”
When something goes wrong — and something always goes wrong — the customer sees a disorganised supplier. The reseller takes the call. The ISP scrambles, pulling engineers off planned jobs and eating the cost. And the follow-on business — from the customer or the reseller — goes to a competitor.
This is not a people problem. It's a structural one.
The information required to run a clean installation is distributed across parties the provisioning team does not directly control. No amount of effort from a good coordinator fixes a system where the data they need sits with a landlord, a solicitor, and an Openreach planner who don't answer to them.
The result is predictable: delayed go-lives, frustrated customers, and revenue sitting in WIP for months rather than weeks.
There's no industry-wide fix for the underlying fragmentation. But there is a way to reduce the window of exposure — to keep the customer live and trading while the permanent circuit catches up. Solve the customer's actual problem (they need to be online now), and a provisioning delay stops being a relationship-ending event.
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