Joined up thinking and implementation- the key to a network operator’s success story.

When it comes to selecting someone to design, install, manage and maintain mobile backhaul links and wide area networks, experience has shown, time and time again, that the fastest and highest quality outcomes are delivered by companies that can perform all the separate, component functions in-house.
For this reason, one of the UK’s more established backhaul providers, Thames Valley based MLL Telecom, have always insisted on doing everything themselves without resorting to outsourcing and subcontracting to third parties. After nearly 20 years in the business, MLL has discovered that routine tasks as well as niggling problems are usually best addressed by individuals who are used to working with each other over an extended period of time. A vertically integrated, streamlined organisation not only seems to work more quickly but almost certainly proves more cost-effective over the longer term.
At the design and planning stage the company cites numerous examples of its own specialists using tried and trusted and often highly original techniques to overcome annoying stumbling blocks and has even adapted wooden telegraph poles and cricket club flagpoles to resolve the sort of recurrent planning problems that inevitably conspire to hold up the deployment of masts and the new links that depend on them.
Once past the planning stage, MLL minimises the possibility of delays in installation by even having its own in-house specialists who are licensed to deal with such delicate matters as flora, fauna and nesting birds that may adversely affect the link once it is up and running.
If there is one thing that really impresses and maybe helps to account for their 100% annual growth rate in new customers, it is their Network Operations Centre which is manned 24 / 7 by skilled technical network engineers rather than by run-of-the-mill call centre staff. They pride themselves on being able to detect 90% of faults before they are even noticed by customers and then fixing over half of them within an hour.
Again, it helps that MLL has its own field engineers covering the entire country. Not only that but they are also accredited to work for multiple operator structures such as Arqiva, Orange, 02, Vodafone, BT, EON and T- mobile. MLL also ensure that they have a wide range of specialist qualifications including Spanhoist Rope Descent, Rope access IRATA 1 and Rigging. The end result is that they don’t have to wait for other people to arrive on site and sort out specific problems. It is this thorough attention to developing and maintaining in-house expertise that enables any problems to be fixed so quickly.
Where there are genuine problems outside the company’s control, MLL again go the extra mile to ensure that this does not impact on network performance and client satisfaction. This even comes down to the weather which clearly has a meaningful effect on signal behaviour. At its NOC, the company maintains real-time monitoring of changing weather conditions across the UK and can boost signal strength when and where amber lights start flashing.

MLL Telecom offers a range of networking solutions, including managed wireless networks.Our full service offering (from design and installation to operation and maintenance) means we can design for the scale and the security needs of: local authorities, the education sector, emergency services and healthcare. We can build and operate your WAN to enable network sharing.