Although rare, a prolonged telecoms outage can seriously damage your ability to serve your customers. This can have long-lasting consequences for your reputation. For this reason, it is important to have an effective telecoms disaster recovery plan in place.
The term ‘disaster recovery’ refers to the procedures and preparations put in place in the event of a disaster. There are a variety of disasters which can cause your business downtime, including fires, inclement weather, and cyberattacks.
You IT systems typically may already have disaster recovery strategies in place, but have you considered your business telephony? If your team is unable to access your office, where does a customer’s call go?
What Should A Telecoms Disaster Recovery Plan Include?
Your telecoms disaster recovery plan will be tailored to your company’s needs. There are, however, a few items that should always be included. These include…
- A detailed inventory of all the hardware in your business.
- An up-to-date map of how your hardware and telecoms systems are networked.
- Either a secondary site to work from or a cloud-hosted system to maintain communications if your premises are rendered unusable.
- The ability to reroute calls from your main telephone system to mobiles.
- Guidelines of the circumstances that would trigger the plan being put into action.
- An estimate of the time it would take to fully implement the disaster recovery plan.
How Carden Telecoms Can Help
Carden Telecoms can assist in developing and implementing a telecoms disaster recovery strategy for your business, ensuring the continuity of communications. Our team have helped prepare and implement these plans for businesses of all sizes.
Here are some of the ways our team can help you develop a telecoms disaster recovery plan:
- Mapping out the current structure of your communications infrastructure, both analogue and digital.
- Identifying weaknesses in your current infrastructure and working to mitigate these through monitoring and maintenance.
- Assisting in the configuration of a virtual phone system operated through the cloud with no need for additional hardware.
- Working with your current telecoms providers to set up re-routing and call forwarding for your existing phones.
- Training your staff on best practices and responsibilities.
- Plan for various telecoms outage scenarios and draw up cost estimates for an effective recovery from each of them.
- Rehearse, and test responses to, various outage scenarios.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is recovery in telecommunication?
Disaster recovery is the process of preparing for and responding to incidents which would cause disruption to your business. Telecoms plays a big role in this as you need to have an effective method of communication to reach customers, suppliers, and other team members in the event of a disaster.
What is network disaster recovery?
A network disaster recovery plan is a set of guidelines that will assist you in restoring all network operations in your organisation following a disaster. A network disaster might include anything from sustained poor performance to a total network outage.
What are the types of disaster recovery?
Hot site disaster recovery is the costliest form of DR plan. It involves having an almost identical facility ready to be activated in the event that your main premises is compromised. However, Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) is far more affordable for most business. DRaaS utilises cloud technology to allow users to connect from any location (including their home) while their main premises are brought back online.
Are you prepared?
If you’re interested in having a effective telecoms disaster recovery in your business, Carden Telecoms can help. Let our expert team prepare a bespoke disaster recovery plan for you. Get in touch today to find out more.