We have received a lot of questions lately from Broadworks and Broadcloud customers who want to know when the right time is to implement a multi-vendor voice termination strategy.

The answer to this question has traditionally been based upon call volume. In other words, once outbound termination reached X number of minutes, it was time to add more vendors and implement LCR. Based upon what we have seen in the marketplace, it is time to re-examine that assumption.

Put simply relying on a single vendor with little ability to redirect traffic is setting your company up for failure. No carrier, not even the big boys, are going to be able to terminate all calls, all the time. For example, the FCC is focused on problems with call termination to rural areas.

If you run into an issue like this and are using a single voice vendor, the only recourse you have is to open a ticket with your voice vendor. Keep in mind, a big problem for your large customer, may be a very small problem for your large vendor. Vendors will often take hours, or even days to correct an issue to a single region.

The key is to prevent these issues by having at least two voice vendors and an ability to easily, and quickly make granular route changes, irrespective of your company size. The cost savings by running an LCR is a nice bonus, but the real value is in the ability to react to service issues in real time.