ISP Optimization: Cutting a $1M Annual Internet Bill by 60%

Background

A regional healthcare organization was carrying three separate ISP accounts with a single major provider, collectively totaling between $75,000 and $90,000 per month — about $1 million in annual internet spend. For an organization of any size, that number demands scrutiny. For a healthcare organization with competing budget pressures, it had become unsustainable.

The problem wasn’t just the cost. The infrastructure underneath it had been accumulating for years without meaningful review. Legacy coax and fiber connections running on outdated bandwidth tiers, old modems well past their useful life, unused fiber connections still being billed, redundant circuits serving the same locations — all of it sitting in network closets and cabinets across the organization, paid for month after month with little visibility into what was actually being used or why.

The organization was paying nearly seven figures annually for an internet environment that hadn’t been seriously audited, optimized, or modernized in years.

The Problem

The organization knew it was overpaying. What it didn’t have was a clear picture of exactly what it was paying for, what could be cut, and how to make changes without disrupting the connectivity that clinical and administrative operations depended on.

The questions were straightforward but the answers required real work: Which connections were active and which were dormant? Which sites had redundant circuits that served no failover purpose? Which contracts were locked in and which had room to move? And critically — how do you reduce spending at this scale without creating service gaps across dozens of locations that needed reliable internet to function?

There was also a physical layer to the problem. Network closets across the organization were cluttered with legacy hardware tied to old coax and fiber connections — equipment that added complexity to any future changes and reflected years of infrastructure growth without corresponding cleanup.

Our Solution

NetSphere approached this as a phased, methodical engagement rather than a one-time swap. Cutting $1 million in annual spend responsibly required a disciplined process — not a rushed migration.

The first step was a comprehensive audit across all branch locations. Every connection was inventoried — what was there, what was active, what was redundant, and what was sitting unused but still being billed. The organization’s existing Meraki SD-WAN deployment gave the team real-time visibility into bandwidth consumption at each site, making it possible to right-size connections based on actual usage rather than assumptions.

Legacy hardware tied to old coax and fiber connections was identified for removal, but on a deliberate timeline. Rather than forcing early terminations that would trigger penalties, the team tracked contract expiration dates and migrated sites off old connections as those contracts lapsed — avoiding unnecessary costs while steadily reducing the footprint.

Physical security infrastructure presented its own migration challenge. The organization’s legacy on-premises security systems were tied to the existing ISP connections. NetSphere coordinated with the physical security vendor to migrate those systems to a modern cloud-based network — removing an entire account from the organization’s ISP relationship and eliminating the dependency that had been keeping those connections active.

With freed-up budget from cut connections, the team introduced T-Mobile as a secondary ISP provider at critical locations. Rather than spending the savings, the organization reinvested a portion into redundancy — giving high-priority sites a failover connection and reducing dependence on a single carrier for uptime.

Throughout the engagement, network closets were audited, legacy hardware was decommissioned, and assets were documented and organized — bringing order to infrastructure that had grown without structure for years.

Results

Over the course of eighteen months, the organization reduced its primary ISP spend by 60% — translating to hundreds of thousands of dollars in annual savings against a baseline that neared $1 million per year.

The savings didn’t come at the cost of performance. Bandwidth speeds improved dramatically across the organization as legacy connections were replaced with modern circuits sized to actual demand. Sites that had been running on 25 to 50 Mbps connections saw speeds climb to 150 to 300 Mbps, with select locations reaching gigabit speeds — a meaningful upgrade that came without a corresponding increase in spend.

Migrating the legacy physical security infrastructure to a cloud-based network eliminated an entire ISP account from the organization’s bottom line — one of the single largest contributors to the overall cost reduction.

Critical locations that previously ran on a single ISP connection now have a secondary T-Mobile connection providing failover coverage, ensuring 24/7 uptime at the sites where connectivity is most operationally important. The organization went from being entirely dependent on one provider across all locations to having a layered, resilient connectivity strategy.

Network closets across the organization were cleared of legacy hardware, unused modems, and dormant circuits — leaving a cleaner, better-documented infrastructure that is significantly easier to manage and audit going forward.

The organization now pays less, gets faster speeds, has built-in redundancy, and carries a fraction of the administrative burden it did eighteen months ago.