To go or not to go with municipal fiber

[jpwallen]

We are a mid-size business that takes in about 300 calls a day and require a fast/reliable internet connection for our customers to use our services. Currently we have a fiber internet connection with a large telecommunications provider that costs us around $2,500 per month for 20MB/s. However recently we have a citywide internet provider that is just starting to offer fiber internet service 30MB/s for around $400 per month.

Our CFO inquired about the city's internet infrastructure to make sure it was at least as reliable as what we are using today and we got a pretty complicated and all inclusive response. Basically the provider (which is a sub-unit of the city) gets it's internet from 1 tier 1 provider and another regional backbone provider, with about 100 employees total (not including city personnel that since the city does their own electric they have all the tools necessary to run fiber). We are concerned that since this is such a small city compared to our previous national provider that charges $2,500 that we won't get the same level of service.

Has anyone else ran into the same dilemma?

 

[USAFRet]

This is what a strong documented SLA and contract is for.
"You will provide Service of X, for $XXX/month, or Penalties will be Z"

It never hurts to consider other suppliers. And that $2,500/month you are currently paying might be way too much.
Things such as this often get cheaper, and actual number of personnel required to manage can go down.

5-10 years ago, if it took 50 people to manage that server farm, today it might take 10.