Sourcing Fiber and Carrier Solutions for Multi-Site Operations

A firm with a single office and a single internet connection has a connectivity challenge with a straightforward solution: evaluate the available carriers, select the best product for the firm's needs, and implement it. A firm with multiple offices, project trailers, remote workers, and client-site teams has a fundamentally different challenge. Each location has different infrastructure availability, different usage patterns, and different consequences if the connection fails. Managing that complexity well requires a strategy, not just a procurement process.

Most multi-site organizations do not have a connectivity strategy. They have a collection of contracts — one per location, negotiated at different times by different people, with different carriers, on different terms. The result is a patchwork of products with inconsistent performance, inconsistent support, and wildly inconsistent pricing for what are often similar or identical services in different markets.

The Location-by-Location Assessment

The foundation of a multi-site connectivity strategy is a location-by-location assessment that answers three questions for each site: what is available, what is needed, and what is the risk tolerance for downtime.

Availability varies significantly across markets. Dedicated fiber, the preferred product for cloud-dependent operations, is widely available in urban markets but inconsistent in suburban and rural areas. In locations where dedicated fiber is not available or is prohibitively expensive, other products — fixed wireless, cable business internet, or in some cases satellite — may be the best available option. Understanding the real options at each location before going to market prevents the assumption that the same product can be deployed everywhere.

Need is a function of what work happens at each location and how cloud-dependent that work is. A design team working with large BIM files in a cloud environment has very different bandwidth requirements than a small project office used primarily for coordination and communication. Sizing the connection appropriately for each location — rather than applying a firm-wide standard — avoids both overspending on locations that do not need high capacity and underspecifying locations that do.

Risk tolerance depends on the criticality of the work at each location. A primary design studio where all project work happens has zero tolerance for extended outages. A satellite office used for occasional meetings can tolerate more. This assessment drives redundancy decisions: where failover is essential, where it is advisable, and where it is optional.

Carrier Selection at Scale

Carrier selection for a multi-site footprint is a different exercise than carrier selection for a single location. In a single-location evaluation, the goal is to find the best available product from among the carriers serving that address. In a multi-site evaluation, there are additional dimensions: consistency of service quality and support across carriers, the ability to manage billing centrally rather than separately for each location, and the contractual terms available for a multi-location commitment.

Some carriers are strong in specific markets and weak in others. A carrier with excellent infrastructure and support in major metropolitan areas may have poor service quality in smaller markets. Evaluating carrier capability location by location, rather than accepting a blanket commitment from a carrier based on its performance in one market, produces better outcomes.

The logistics of multi-site carrier procurement — evaluating options, negotiating terms, managing the implementation timeline across multiple locations, and coordinating with building owners or landlords where required — consume significant internal resources if managed internally. Our partnership with Avant centralizes this process. Rather than negotiating separately with each carrier at each location, we access the full carrier market through a single relationship, with aggregated pricing and centralized contract management.

Ongoing Management

Multi-site connectivity is not a set-and-forget investment. Contracts expire and need to be renegotiated. Performance should be monitored against SLA commitments. New locations need to be added as the firm grows. Location needs change as project teams shift or remote work patterns evolve. Managing this ongoing without dedicated resources or market expertise leads to the same patchwork situation that the initial strategy was designed to avoid.

Building ongoing management into the connectivity strategy from the start — whether through internal resources, a managed services arrangement, or a partnership with an aggregator that provides ongoing support — is what keeps multi-site connectivity performing as the firm and its needs evolve.