Furniture arrives in days. Fiber can take ninety. That asymmetry is why so many moves end with a team working off phone hotspots for a fortnight.
Before you sign the lease
This is the step that saves everything downstream. Qualify the address before you commit to it. Ask which carriers are lit in the building — not the block, the building. If none are, you are looking at a construction timeline and a construction cost, and both are far better known during negotiation than after.
A building with three lit carriers is worth real money in rent terms compared to one with none. It is a legitimate lease negotiating point and almost nobody raises it.
Ninety days out
- Place the order. If construction is needed, this is already tight.
- Get the construction cost in writing if a lateral is required.
- Confirm where the circuit will terminate — which room, which floor. "The building" is not an address for a demarcation point.
Thirty days out
- Confirm the install date and who needs to grant the technician access.
- Order the bridge circuit if the primary will not be ready — coax or fixed wireless often turns up in days.
- Plan the phone cutover. Number porting has its own timeline and does not care about yours.
- Check the internal cabling actually reaches the desks. A circuit in the basement is not internet on the third floor.
Move week
- Test the circuit before anyone relies on it — ideally a week early, with real traffic.
- Keep the old circuit running until the new one is proven. Overlapping for a month is cheap insurance.
- Do not cancel the old service before the new one has carried a full working day.
The single most common mistake is treating internet as a utility that will be there, like water. It is a construction project with a lead time.
