Insights | Karl Hahn, Sales Director | Monday 26 October 2026 | 4 min read
I started at Telstra more than 20 years ago, in a contact centre. Within a few years I was selling to businesses face to face, and I’ve been on the selling side of telco and ICT contracts ever since.
Here’s what you learn from that seat. The problems customers ring about in year two were nearly always there on the day they signed. Nobody hid them. Nobody asked.
The short answer
Before you sign, find out the term, what it costs to leave, whether the price can rise, what the service levels are and who owns a fault. Write the answers down. If the salesperson can’t answer one plainly, that tells you something too.
1. How long is the term, and what happens at the end of it?
Most business telco agreements run for two or three years. What matters is the last day. Some contracts roll over to month to month at the same price. Some start a new fixed term unless you give notice inside a set window. Some move you to a higher out-of-contract rate.
Get the end-of-term clause in writing, and put the notice date in your calendar now, not in three years’ time. A contract that renews without you noticing isn’t one you chose.
2. What does it cost to leave early?
You merge, move premises, close a site or shift your phones into Microsoft Teams. Any of those can mean leaving a service early.
Ask for the early termination charge as a formula, and as a dollar figure for a sample month. Check whether it applies per service or per agreement, and whether it still applies if you upgrade with the same provider.
3. Can the price go up during the term, and by how much?
A fixed term isn’t always a fixed price. Some agreements allow annual price reviews, pass-through of carrier increases or indexing to inflation. That’s fine if you know before you sign.
Find out which charges can move, what triggers it, how much notice you get, and whether a rise lets you leave without penalty. If it does, the rest matters a lot less.
4. What are the service levels, and what happens when they are missed?
Look for three things: how a fault is classified (what counts as critical), the response and restoration targets for each class, and what happens if a target is missed.
Then check the hours. A four-hour restoration target that only applies in business hours is a very different product from one that applies at 2am on a Sunday. Match it to how your business really runs. For some sites a Business NBN service is the right answer. For others it’s a dedicated service like Telstra Internet Direct. We’ve set out the difference on our Networks and Connectivity page.
5. When something breaks, who owns the fault?
Your internet, phone system, network hardware and cloud services might come from four different companies. When a call drops, each of them can fairly say the problem is somewhere else, and each could be right.
So ask: if the fault turns out to be in another vendor’s part of the chain, will you still own it until it’s fixed? Will one person stay on it and keep me informed, or will I get a reference number and a different phone number? That single point of contact is the whole idea behind OneHelpdesk. How quickly they answer tells you a lot.
The question that shows whether they will still call you after go-live
There’s a sixth question, and if I could only ask one, it would be this one.
Who will be my contact in six months, and when will I next hear from them without me ringing first?
A provider who plans to stay involved will have an answer: a named person and a review date. One who doesn’t will talk about “the account team”. Either way, you’ve learned what year two will look like.
The practical takeaway
Before your next signing, put the five questions on one page and send them to each provider in writing. Written answers are easier to compare, and easier to hold someone to. If you’d like a second opinion on a quote you already have, let’s have a chat.
Sally set out how three ex-Telstra people ended up running a managed ICT business. This is the buying-side version of that lesson.
Frequently asked questions
What are the best questions to ask before signing a telco contract?
The five above, then ask who your contact will be in six months.
Should I sign a longer term to get a lower price?
Only if the exit terms and the price-rise clauses are acceptable at the longer term. A discount doesn’t help if you can’t leave when the business changes.
Is a cheaper quote with weaker service levels a bad deal?
Not always. Where a day offline is an inconvenience, it can be the right call. Where an hour offline stops trading, it rarely is.
What should I do about the contract I already have?
Find the end date and the notice window now, and record them. That one step removes most of the surprises.
Karl Hahn, Sales Director, Clarity ICT
Karl Hahn is Sales Director at Clarity ICT. He has spent more than 20 years selling telco and ICT services to businesses, beginning in a Telstra contact centre.