* We get readers' SLA questions answered by MCI
For the past several weeks, we’ve been looking into the service-level agreements offered by top-tier ISPs. Our goal is to provide information to help you differentiate among the carriers in terms of how they approach customer service.
Since we started this series, we’ve received much e-mail from readers with comments about what they like and don’t like about industry SLAs. This week, we’ll share some of those reader comments.
Several readers commented on MCI’s claim that it delivers 100% availability on its IP network (see https://www.nwfusion.com/newsletters/isp/2004/1004isp2.html).
In today’s column, I’ll give MCI a chance to respond to reader questions about its IP network availability and performance guarantees.
One ISP News Report reader questioned whether MCI is making it easier to get reimbursed if the carrier fails to meet its 100% availability SLA guarantee.
“When I was Director of Telecommunications for a major retailer, I had to fight to get refunds for [MCI’s] less than 100% availability,” the reader says. “Now does it mean that no one has to pay for an unavailable network?”
Here is MCI’s response to this question: “MCI provides one day’s credit for every hour of an outage or fraction of an hour. So if a customer were down for five minutes, they would qualify for a full day’s credit. Credits need to be requested by the customer by simply sending an e-mail to a specific address. Customers can find complete details on all MCI SLAs on our public Web site (https://global.mci.com/terms). In general, it takes one to two billing cycles to process the customer credit.”
Another reader wrote to complain that MCI’s 100% availability guarantee applies only to communications that remain on MCI’s IP network.
“MCI’s SLAs pertain to on-net traffic unless otherwise stated,” the reader complains. “They can say end-to-end, through the loop, etc. etc., but it applies to on-net traffic (i.e., an end-to-end MCI client.) What about off-net traffic; e.g. when MCI has a client with traffic sent to AT&T or Sprint. This is the key issue. Can a company expect all its clients or vendors to use the same service provider as them when implementing a supply chain extranet? I would like to see MCI address the pertinent issue of end-to-end SLAs in a federated network.”
Here is a clarification from MCI: “Yes, MCI’s SLAs apply only to its own networks, as we cannot control the quality of another provider’s network(s).”
Do you have a question you’d like answered about SLAs for IP services? If so, e-mail it to me (mailto:cmarsan@nww.com), and we’ll chase down an answer. Look for more reader questions, answers and comments later this week.
