Even the fastest broadband can be crawlingly slow when something goes wrong – especially when your ISP is not the telco that owns the infrastructure.

So if you’re sick of waiting for your ISP’s support crew to get the telco to fix an issue, Kordia has unveiled a new service, which it claims, eliminates the ‘middle man’.

Named Kordia Connect, the service is a converged network service enabling small and medium-size businesses to access internet and voice services over a single dedicated, high quality, scalable connection.

The company says the service turns the traditional ISP / service provider relationship on its head, ensuring the business is linked direct to the network rather than through an internet service provider.

And that has huge benefits for small and medium enterprises according to Kordia director of Sales and Marketing Drew Gilpin.

“Put simply, it means extra convenience, extra efficiency and extra flexibility for the business," he says.

"That’s because the internet and voice services run through a single dedicated and scalable Kordia connection, instead of multiple connections.

“Businesses can add extra phone lines with a single phone call, for instance, and clearly see how many more are needed. Or check exactly how much internet is being used, so they can ensure the size is right.

“These might seem like little things but they make life easier enabling owners to get on with focusing on their business, not the set-up."

Around for 60 years, Kordia began life as a broadcast transmission business. An SOE owned by the taxpayer, it has invested heavily over recent years in becoming a full scale telecommunications provider focusing on the business market.

“With Kordia Connect, we have built on our experience with large enterprises to provide small and medium-size businesses with a higher level of quality assurance,” Gilpin says.

“We are not an ISP and we are the only telco dedicated to business - we have only business customers. Competitor business products tend to be residential based services scaled up for business.

"Because we own our own network and deal only with businesses, we are able to provide a superior level of service.

“Kordia Connect is delivered over our own backbone network so it is entirely scalable and brings together both voice and internet in the one cable.

"Others who are selling someone else’s network are reliant on that third party coming to the party.”

Internet

Developed especially for business customers, Kordia Connect Internet is a connection that runs directly from the client’s premises to the Kordia Internet gateway.

“That avoids such things as congestion of the broadband network - we all know about the 3.30pm slowdown - and we're able to provide consistent, reliable and high-performance internet,” Gilpin says.

Voice

Claiming Kordia Connect to be versatile, Giplin says it embodies the means to reserve capacity and prioritise voice ahead of other traffic on a network using dedicated connections - meaning voice calls don't pass through the internet.

When voice calls aren't being made, network capacity is available to other applications – such as the internet – to get the best possible use out of the network investment.