73%
of businesses are paying above market rate for internet and telecom services, based on our analysis of 2,800+ invoices. The average overpayment is $847/month.
We hear the same reaction when we show companies their analysis: "How did this happen?" The honest answer is: by design.
Telecom contracts are not written to be understood. They are written to be signed. The pricing structures, renewal clauses, and fee schedules are deliberately complex — complex enough that even experienced IT buyers miss the mechanisms that gradually inflate what they pay.
1Rate creep: the slow boil
Most telecom contracts include language that permits "standard rate adjustments" — periodic price increases that the carrier can implement without your explicit agreement. These increases are small by design: $8 here, $12 there. Over a 3-year contract, a business paying $500/month for internet might end up at $640/month without signing a single new document.
The carrier is betting — correctly, in most cases — that no one is watching. IT managers are busy. Finance sees a recurring vendor line item and doesn't scrutinize it. Executives assume someone else is managing it.
The fix: audit your invoice against your original contract once per year. Any increase not specifically authorized in writing is a billing dispute.
2The auto-renewal trap
Standard telecom contracts auto-renew on a month-to-month basis at the end of the contract term. The carrier sends a notice — often buried in your billing portal — 90 days before renewal. Miss that window, and you're locked in for another year at whatever rate they've drifted to.
More insidiously, some contracts auto-renew to a new multi-year term, not just month-to-month. Read Section 4 of your contract (or whatever governs renewal terms) before you're inside the 90-day window.
The fix: calendar your contract end date and set a 90-day alert. Start your negotiation or RFP process the day that alert fires.
3The bundled service complexity play
Carriers love to bundle. Internet + voice + managed WiFi + static IPs + security monitoring. Each service added to a bundle increases the complexity of the invoice, making it harder to verify whether each line is accurate.
This isn't accidental. A 15-line invoice is much harder to audit than a 3-line invoice. Most businesses look at the total number and assume the breakdown is correct.
Our analysis of multi-service invoices consistently finds at least one service being billed at a higher rate than the contract specifies, plus one service that the customer didn't actively request and may not be using.
The three-part audit
If you want to know whether you're in the 73%, here's what a proper telecom bill audit looks for:
- Rate benchmark: Is each service priced within the current market range for your service tier, region, and contract length? This requires external data — your carrier will never proactively tell you they could have charged you less.
- Contract compliance: Does each invoice line item match the service description and price listed in your signed contract? Discrepancies are billing errors. Billing errors are refundable.
- Service utilization: Are you paying for services you actually use? Unused phone lines, dormant static IPs, and legacy service tiers that should have been deprecated years ago are common findings.
Most businesses have never done all three. The ones that have — even once — consistently find savings of 15–30% of their total telecom spend.