In the channel, your organization’s reputation is only as strong as the partners and suppliers behind you. For many IT service providers and MSSPs, the carrier relationship falls short. It’s slow to respond, difficult to escalate, and disconnected from how you work. Sure, you’ve tried in the past to make inroads, but mostly carriers have looked elsewhere to build partnerships. They have failed to see connectivity opportunities for MSPs and their businesses.
That approach may have worked when clients needed only basic connectivity. But today, channel partners are building cloud-first infrastructures, managing real-time security, and delivering seamless support for businesses of every size. Your carrier should be built for this reality.
That’s why more MSPs are turning to providers who embrace a “Carrier Evolved” approach. These partnerships are rooted in collaboration, alignment, and trust.
This signifies a strategic shift in how channel partners view and manage connectivity. No longer a commodity, it’s now an opportunity. More importantly, for MSPs who embrace this transformation, it’s one of the most underutilized yet business-critical levers in their network stack.
The Commodity Problem
Historically, many MSPs have distanced themselves from the carrier side of the network. With broken promises, poor customer and partner satisfaction, and cold circuit handoffs, the traditional carrier model created risk, not value. Most MSPs have chosen to stay out of WAN conversations entirely.
For midmarket and enterprise, these technologies are the foundation for every SaaS login, cloud transaction, remote desktop session, and client-facing application. The worldwide web is the backbone of data communications. Treating connectivity like a commodity only invites performance degradation, troubleshooting chaos, unknown vulnerabilities, and reputational risk.
Truthfully, connectivity isn’t just a cost center. It’s an operational asset. It’s also one of the biggest blind spots in the MSP stack today.
The Risk MSPs Can’t Ignore
Poorly architected circuits rarely go down in the traditional sense. They’re just slow, congested, single-homed, or exposed to public internet. That’s how jitter, packet loss, and inconsistent throughput sneak in. Suddenly, your help desk is flooded with calls and new support tickets.
When performance collapses under pressure, the cloud feels like it’s crawling, productivity tanks, and fingers start pointing. Guess who’s still on the hook? You.
Even when MSPs don’t manage connectivity for their clients, they are often on the receiving end of clients’ frustrations. They absorb the time cost of answering questions and resolving associated problems. So, why shouldn’t they have more control over critical parts of the IT infrastructure?
Consider Connectivity Your MSP’s Brand
Your customers don’t differentiate between their LAN and their WAN. If something goes wrong anywhere on the network, the MSP gets the call. That makes unmanaged or underperforming connectivity a liability.
But it doesn’t have to be. Here are five ways MSPs should rethink connectivity to minimize risk factors and maximize new revenue opportunities.
1. Elevate Connectivity from Commodity to Catalyst
It’s time to stop treating the WAN like plumbing. Strategic, private connectivity can become one of the most valuable tools in your stack, powering performance, reducing security risk, and unlocking new value.
2. Segment for Security and Scale
VPNs over the public internet weren’t built for sensitive data. With Layer 2 isolation and advanced segmentation, you can separate critical workloads, mitigate DDOS attacks and increase your MSP’s security layers.
3. Reclaim the WAN as a Value Driver
The WAN is how your clients work, period. Done right, it enables application uptime, cloud accessibility, and resilience. You don’t need to rebuild the internet, but rethink how traffic securely traverses that chasm.
Keith White
4. Embed Resilience into Your Architecture
Continuity isn’t about more than just backups. You must design the WAN for failure mitigation. That means redundant paths, smart routing, and private transport from the edge to anywhere. Your architecture should keep clients connected and operational when others are struggling to keep pace.
5. Unlock a New Revenue Stream with Confidence
Partnering with a provider who embraces the “Carrier Evolved” approach allows you to offer high-performance connectivity without the mainstream services headaches. It’s a recurring revenue stream, a competitive differentiator, and a better experience for everyone — especially for MSP and MSP customers.
What ‘Carrier Evolved’ Looks Like in Practice
Take, for example, a leading global commercial property management firm, which had to make an operational shift towards better control over its infrastructure and the WAN.
Its connectivity solutions provider operated as an extension of this partners’ team. That meant shared urgency, aligned goals, and consistent execution from presales and planning to design, architecture and provisioning, and support. No cold-circuit handoffs. No blame games.
The results were clear. Tighter integration with resulted in faster installs, reduced escalations, and a clear focus on delivering customer-based outcomes. That’s a Carrier Evolved approach: embedded, consistent, and built for your workflow. A true extension of your team.
Raise Your Standards. Rethink Your Partnerships.
You’ve built your business and brand on high standards. So, why risk that reputation on just any supplier?
Partnering with the right carrier can simplify your stack, expand your services, reduce client churn, and unlock untapped revenue. The next phase of MSP growth goes beyond endpoint protection or AI. It’s about owning the transport layer and using it as a springboard for security, performance, and strategic value.
The opportunity is there. The only question is: Who’s going to grab it?
Keith White is chief marketing officer of Massive Networks, an emerging global leader in connectivity solutions.
Featured image: Innovative — stock.adobe.com
