CRN Exclusive: Telarus Adds Outage Resolution To Circuit Monitoring Service, Letting Agent Partners Act As MSPs

Master agent Telarus is giving its circuit monitoring capability a boost.

For two years, Telarus' partners have had the ability to monitor circuits on behalf of their end customers, but the service stopped there. Partners, especially telecom agent partners, have been looking for help after "the alarm goes off," and Telarus is making that resolution service available to its partners today, according to Patrick Oborn, co-founder of Sandy, Utah-based Telarus.

The latest service is a paid monthly option that partners can extend to their customers that lets Telarus handle any network issues or outages using its newly built Network Operation Center in Houston.

[Related: Telarus Unveils Order Status Tool To' Give Partners Their Time Back']

"Partners can bake network services, circuit monitoring and other value-added services into one proposal," Oborn said. "The best part is that partners don't have to do anything for [the circuit monitoring service] -- this service lends itself to that agent partner/telecom service broker model."

Telarus is leveraging its East and West Coast probes that use VXSuite technology, its real-time VoIP monitoring software platform that the company acquired in 2015, and its NOC to monitor circuits from Telarus' portfolio of service provider partners, 24/7, Oborn said.

Via the service, the Telarus team will contact the carrier and open a ticket in the event of an outage, and then follow the ticket until the issue is resolved. Telarus' team also will communicate with either the partner or the end customer -- depending on the customer's preference -- regarding progress updates and ticket closures.

The service will cost customers $20 per circuit each month, with a $5-per-circuit commission to the agent partner each month. Partners can expect to be paid through Telarus' typical commission systems for the service, according to the master agent.

Telarus' previous circuit monitoring service, which only alerted partners to an outage, costs customers $10 a month per circuit.

"Agents don't want to get their hands dirty -- they just want to broker the services, but not offering resolution has always been our weakness and what held us back from widespread adoption," he said.

The enhanced offering lets partners layer on circuit monitoring in a way that carriers don't do, while also solving network issues on behalf of the customer -- giving partners a leg up over competing partners or carriers' direct sales teams, he said.

Despite the desire to stay out of any reputation-damaging network issues or outages, the "hands-off" circuit monitoring service is presenting an opportunity for agent partners to move into the MSP space. MSPs have typically handled incident response and NOC services for customers, not the traditional telecom agent, Oborn said.

"Our agents can depend on our NOC, and that gives a lot of assurance to a potential buyer, especially a customer on the fence about going direct with a carrier," he said.