Structure of a budgetary internet access quote

Understanding the Budgetary Quote

When you request an Internet Access line with IPknowledge, our dedicated team goes out and contacts multiple vendors to obtain competitive quotes, in order to get the best possible line in both quality and price.

We will aim to match your requirements for the line and provide you with accurate cost estimates for what your order would cost to be delivered. After the quoting process has been completed, IPknowledge will give you a Budgetary Quote.

This preliminary quote is not yet formalized but will give you an idea of what the line will cost and what you will get for the proposed line. Typically, the quote will look like this:

Explaining the Columns: A Breakdown of the Quote Data

For a detailed understanding, I can explain the columns briefly to best arm you in the interpretation of the data.

The first column, Line #, is just an identifier to allow you to clearly indicate a specific Internet Access line in case there are multiple lines being offered and one of the lines needs to be discussed. Keeping a single identifier makes it easier to track the line.

The City is a secondary identifier. In situations where multiple lines are ordered for several cities, it helps in identifying the line based on the city they are based in.

The Product Type is the type of Internet Access technology that IPknowledge is offering. While this will usually be Fiber, IPknowledge also offers DSL or wireless solutions, including 4G/LTE or Microwave.

Decoding the Jargon: CPE, IP Range, and More

CPE is a smart bit of jargon.

This stands for Customer Premises Equipment, commonly referred to as a router.

A router is necessary to access the Internet Access line.

If it’s not explicitly included in the quote, it means that will need to provide one for yourself. Typically, IPknowledge works with vendors to ensure
that a CPE is included in the offer. IP range means the number of available IP addresses after the installation. Due to modern SD-WAN solutions requiring several IPs to be available, IPknowledge will quote for a /29 range, which comes with 8 IPs.

The Site Address, as the name suggests, is the location where IPknowledge’s vendors will deliver the Internet Access line. Pay close attention to this! Even at IPknowledge, we are only human, and we certainly wouldn’t want to mistakenly order a line for the wrong location.

The Bandwidth is always calculated in Mbps or Megabits per second. This gives you a good idea of the amount of data that can be transferred over the Internet Access line per second and directly impacts the number of people who can efficiently work with the line. For instance, a small office of three or four people may have enough bandwidth with a 50Mbps line, while a headquarters office may need up to 1000Mbps due to the amount of work being done.

OTC, once again, involves a touch of jargon. It stands for One-Time Costs, also referred to as Non-Recurring Costs. This means that these costs will only need to be paid once and typically cover administrative work, installation costs, digging work, etc. We, usually, have good deals with our vendors and are able to get cheap installation offers, though this is not always the case with extensive requirements.

MRC, on the other hand, is the bread and butter of the costs of an Internet Access line. It stands for Monthly Recurring Costs and gives an overview of the charges that will be invoiced by IPknowledge on a monthly basis.
Contract Terms: Choosing the Right Duration The term shows how many months the contract will run for. We usually send in quotes for 36-month contracts: opting for longer-term contracts allows Internet

Service Providers (ISPs) to waive One-Time Costs (OTC) and reduce Monthly Recurring Costs (MRC) in recognition of the extended commitment. However, if desired, you can also request one-year contracts which are possible but come with higher costs.

Lead Time: Estimated Delivery Time for Internet Access Lines

Lead Time is the estimated time that will be needed to deliver the Internet Access line after ordering.

This can differ depending on technology and availability in the requested area, though the estimated lead time is between 8 weeks (very easy sites) and 22 weeks (sites that require major work to deliver the line).

Do note: this is always an estimate and circumstances and challenges may cause this estimate to be missed.

Last Mile Provider: Ensuring Redundancy and Downtime Prevention

Finally, the Last Mile provider is the company that manages the physical network infrastructure for the offered line. IPknowledge strives to provide complete redundancy to their customers, which means that, if two internet lines are offered, the ISPs and the Last Mile providers are different. This is to ensure that an outage will never affect both internet lines. This way, you know that your internet service will experience no downtime.

Monitoring and Support: Enhancing Internet Access Performance

The second line in the example above is dedicated to the Monitoring and Support service that we offer. There are different levels of monitoring and support and all of them can be applied to your Internet Access order, giving different levels of service to your lines. We strongly recommend adding this service to your orders so that we can help you to get the most out of your Internet Access lines.

Making an Informed Decision

Based on this budgetary quote, you will be able to decide if this is an offer that you can work with.

You are always welcome to discuss the budgetary quote with your account manager, who will readily explain how we arrived at the quoted prices.

When the budgetary quote has been approved, we will furnish you with a firm quote, which will provide us with the necessary mandate to order an Internet Access line for you.

‍Contact us if you are interested and book a FREE consult.‍