John Carter, Managing Director of DMSL, says: “This is a sales dream becomes reality – the customer pays less and gets more. The recent price reductions on BTnet have made this un-contended, guaranteed bandwidth service cheaper than ever. That presents partners with a great opportunity to upgrade customers and cut their bills at the same time. With free install on three-year contracts, the opportunity has never been better.”
BTnet services are now available for under £6000 per annum for a 100mb bearer circuit, and with free line install and engineer set up of a managed Cisco router, DMSL predicts that many more businesses will be tempted to take up the service. In doing so, they will ensure that they can make the most of web access, hosted services, videoconferencing and collaboration software.
Simon Heath, BT Technical Services Manager for DMSL, says that it is an offer that many businesses will find hard turn down. “BTnet is a premium service and until recently, you had to pay a premium price to take advantage. But the recent pricing restructure and the opening up of more Points of Presence around the UK, means that BTnet is now actually cheaper than many other services out there. Customers can now get the Ferrari performance for the price of a standard car. For businesses that need dependable, guaranteed performance – whether that’s for applications, hosted services, or simply email, BTnet is a very attractive option. As it gives you the same speed upstream and downstream and it can support any business service, including high quality hosted VoIP.”
There is now a great opportunity for resellers to actively take BTnet services to the market,” says Heath. “We’ve seen a distinct increase in sales since the price changes were introduced last month and we see good potential here for partners. Most customers who are already on older BTnet services, and those who are struggling with the speeds that standard or even bonded ADSL services deliver, are prime targets for BTnet now – and there are plenty of companies that fall into that category.”
Heath also points out that BTnet bandwidth is guaranteed not just from the PoP to the customer site but also through the core network all the way through to the Internet. “Customers need to be aware that performance not only depends on the bandwidth to the site, but also what bandwidth is guaranteed through the ISP’s core network. If you want your customer to be happy with the Internet service you recommend it’s something worth checking.” A number of suppliers sell high speed leased line services but with shared core connectivity, which will almost certainly mean that the full available bandwidth cannot be guaranteed at all times.
Selling the BTnet services is also highly profitable for resellers. BTnet is offered on a three- or a five-year contract so there are good revenues to be earned and the prospect of renewals in the future. It also paves the way for the sales of other services, such as hosted VoIP, which is now starting to take off in a major way.
DMSL is offering full training and hands-on sales support to any resellers that work with the company to take the BTnet services to market. As part of its service, DMSL can provide immediate quotations for BTnet connections with the only information required being the customer’s postcode and the level of bandwidth they need. Heath says: “BTnet is a premium product and is now very price-competitive and we are seeing many customers benefit from a faster, more scalable service and pay less for it when they migrate, or upgrade their Internet access. I would urge resellers to check with their customers and clients what internet access they’ve got and how much they are paying and check with us to see whether they can get more for less. From both the customer’s and the reseller’s perspective, there is nothing to lose by investigating the potential.”