Best Global MPLS providers

[carl_townshend]

Hi All

Can anyone tell me who are some of the best MPLS providers that give global coverage?

Currently we use BT, however I am sure there are cheaper options from other big providers out there?

Many thanks

[Leo Laohoo · Accepted solution]

Currently we use BT, however I am sure there are cheaper options from other big providers out there?

C'mon, Carl.  Gimme a break!  "Best" MPLS provider and "cheap"?  

[Joseph W. Doherty]

Laugh - indeed.

If you want cheaper you'll want to consider tunneling across the Internet.

I once worked within a sizable global company and we often had L3 VPN MPLS side-by-side with Internet tunnels.  The latter was done to have a less expensive secondary path, but we generally found little difference in performance, and when you got into 3rd world networks, their Internet connectivity was often better than could be had via private cloud connections.

The big advantage of private MPLS, are things like SLAs and options for QoS.  Again, found little practical advantage to MPLS SLAs.  Regarding MPLS QoS, often did as well with shaping and egress QoS, as congestion points are often "cloud" ingress/egress.

[Mark Malone · Accepted solution]

We use Vodafone in EMEA, NTT in Asia and in US ATT 

Unfortunately no matter what provider you use they are still bound to smaller or sometimes equal size ISPs who may own the last mile so it's important not just the coverage they have but also the relationships they have with local partners, you will find as we do global ISPs still need to adhere to the local mostly dominant provider like DT in Germany or Orange in France etc, your global ISP still ties in with these at some level to utilize there local paths so the relationships are important especially when it comes to sla agreements for circuits 

[Leo Laohoo]

Carl, 

I used to work for SITA/Equant (Joint Venture) for four years until I got retrenched.  I used to work in a 24-hour team called Proactive Surveillance and Monitoring.  

I don't know about other companies but when I was working, we had several customers put into a series of "tiers".  One of the tiers we manage because clients falling into these tiers were about to take their multi-million dollar business elsewhere.  We were the "last hope".  

I regularly break rules in order to get to the bottom of the fault.  In a lot of cases, it meant waking up anyone (and everyone) at 3 am in the morning.  

Most of our clients were airline companies but we have other big-ticket companies.  

What I'm getting at is this:  If you're company is big enough, moving to another provider can mean big trouble for the former.