Full site fit out
Fastlane Autocare needed phones and data across a workshop, an MOT bay, a sales room and reception. The national providers had nothing available at the address. We found a route, then built everything behind it.
The situation
Fastlane Autocare is a busy independent garage doing servicing, repairs and MOTs. The work happens in several places at once: a technician under a bonnet in the workshop, an MOT inspection in the bay, someone pricing a job in the sales room and a customer at reception wanting an answer now.
All of that needed phones and data, and none of it could depend on a single router in an office. The bigger problem came first though. When they looked at getting a proper connection in, the national providers came back with nothing. No full fibre availability at the address.
The connection
A postcode checker tells you about one network. It does not tell you about the others, and it does not tell you what can be built.
The usual national providers, BT and Virgin Media among them, returned no availability at the building. For a lot of businesses that is where it ends, and they carry on limping along on whatever they already have.
We checked the premises against other carriers rather than accepting the first answer, found a route in, and got an affordable fibre connection installed into the building. That connection is what made everything after it possible.
It is worth a second opinion. We did the same for a pub in Prescot that had been turned away. Read that one.
What we did
Telephony was the reason they called. It was about a quarter of the job. A phone system is only as good as the infrastructure underneath it, so we built that first.
This is the cabinet going in. It is not what anyone buys a phone system for, and it is the reason the phone system still works in three years.
When a position needs moving, a desk needs adding or something stops working, an engineer opens this door and can see the whole site. That is the difference between a ten minute change and a morning of tracing cable.
The telephony
Recording calls carries obligations around telling people and holding the data no longer than you need it. We set the export and retention up so the business keeps control of its own records, but how the recordings are used and announced is theirs to set.
The outcome
Fastlane now runs on a connection the national providers said did not exist, with a cabinet and cabling that an engineer can actually work on, Wi-Fi that reaches the bay, and a phone system that tells them what is happening rather than just ringing.
The retail unit next door runs on the same network over Cat6a we ran in duct under the ground between the two buildings, which means one connection, one system and one place to call when something needs changing.
The part that matters most is the least visible. When something does go wrong, there is a labelled cabinet, a documented install and the same team who fitted it answering the phone.
In their words
You'll not find better customer service. Always helpful and very knowledgeable. They won't sell you what you don't need!
Mark Coakley, Fastlane AutocareQuestions
Not necessarily. Most availability checkers query one network, usually Openreach, so a negative result describes that network rather than your building. Alternative carriers build their own infrastructure with different footprints. We check a premises against multiple networks before telling anyone it cannot be done.
Because the alternative is extensions, adapters and unlabelled cable, and every fault then becomes a search. A cabinet puts every connection in one place, labelled, so a problem is traced in minutes. It also means the next change is a patch rather than a rewire.
It will if it is designed for one. Workshops are full of steel, machinery and electrical noise, and a router in the office will not carry. Access points get placed for the building rather than for the power sockets, and we test coverage at the positions people actually work in.
It puts calls waiting, answered and missed on a screen in front of the team. The value is not surveillance, it is that a missed call is visible while you can still do something about it, rather than discovered in a report next month.
Yes, and we would encourage it. On this install the recordings and reports export to the business's own internal repository and a cloud repository every 30 days, so the records belong to the company rather than living only on a platform.
Tell us the address and what you are trying to run. We will check it properly and tell you honestly what is possible.
