The costly process of sending field service personnel to a physical location to install equipment, fix a hardware failure, or troubleshoot a connection. Telecom providers and IT managed service companies actively try to minimize these dispatches by using remote diagnostics, automated provisioning, and redundant systems, as the labor and fuel costs severely impact profit margins.
See if you can bounce the router remotely first, because a truck roll to that remote site is going to cost us three hours of labor.
A primary metric in ISP operations is "truck rolls per 100 customers." Reducing this number is a constant management goal.
Also heard as
- dispatch
Related terms
Demarc extension
The physical cabling that connects a service provider's termination point to the customer's networking equipment.
OSS
The software systems used by telecommunications service providers to manage their networks.
CPE
Telecommunications hardware located at the subscriber's physical location rather than the provider's facility.