Mid-market and enterprise companies lose up to 12% of their telecom budget to billing errors, zombie lines, and mismatched rate plans...and most don’t even know it.
Enterprise telecom expense management has never been more complex, or more critical. As carriers invest billions in 5G, IoT, and AI-driven services, the options available to businesses are expanding, and so is the cost of managing them poorly. For mid-market and enterprise organizations juggling hundreds or thousands of mobile lines, IoT endpoints, and data circuits across multiple carriers, that complexity carries a real price tag.
Industry data shows that up to 12% of enterprise telecom invoices contain billing errors, and “zombie” lines, devices tied to former employees that were never canceled, can consume up to 15% of a mobile budget. For a company spending $350K a year on wireless, that’s up to $95,000 walking out the door unnoticed. The problem isn’t that businesses don’t care. It’s that they don’t have the visibility or bandwidth to catch it. And the carriers aren’t going to tell you.
Managing telecom used to mean overseeing a few circuits and desk phones. Today, IT teams juggle smartphones, tablets, hotspots, fleet trackers, POS terminals, IoT sensors, and more, each with its own SIM, rate plan, and carrier portal. With two or three carriers in the mix, there’s no single source of truth. Inventory lives in one system, billing in another, and usage data in a third. IT reconciles in spreadsheets, finance can’t validate invoices, and no one owns the full picture.
Traditional telecom expense managers (TEMs) help by aggregating invoices and flagging anomalies, typically at $5–10 per line per month. But TEMs solve only one piece of the puzzle. They show you what you spent. They usually can’t optimize rate plans across carriers, automate SIM lifecycle management, or handle billing and taxation. The gap between seeing the problem and fixing it is where most mid-market companies get stuck.
Download your invoice detail from each carrier portal and compare per-line cost against actual data consumption. You’ll often find that a $70/month unlimited plan is being used by someone averaging 3–5 GB. That’s a line that could be on a $35 plan with zero impact. Multiply that across 500 lines, and the savings add up fast. This exercise also surfaces zombie lines, active SIMs with near-zero usage still being billed monthly. Rate plan optimization alone typically yields 15–30% savings.
Instead of managing three carriers, three portals, and three invoices separately, a carrier-agnostic provider gives you one vendor, one consolidated bill, and one support team that understands your entire environment. This extends beyond mobility to DIA, broadband, SD-WAN, and IoT connectivity. The operational simplification frees up IT and finance to focus on work that moves the business forward. Add cost-center billing by location, and your finance team gets the granularity they need without the manual reconciliation.
Every mobile device is a potential entry point for bad actors and a potential source of unnecessary cost. MDM solutions enforce security policies and restrict unauthorized applications, but they also reduce data overages by controlling non-business usage. Private Networks add another layer, keeping critical traffic off the public internet. Ideally, your MDM and connectivity management live with the same provider for faster response and more coherent governance.
If you can’t see every SIM, every device, and every dollar in one place, you’re managing by guesswork. A unified SIM management platform provides real-time visibility across your entire connected fleet and lets you act on it: activate or deactivate SIMs, change plans, set usage alerts, and flag anomalies from one dashboard. Most tools focus on either IoT or mobility. If your business manages both, you need a platform that handles everything. When that portal also includes automated billing, revenue assurance, and rate plan optimization, you’ve moved from visibility to control.
Effective enterprise telecom expense management isn’t about adding another dashboard, it’s about having the right partner. At Altaworx, we have a full telecom stack, along with our platform, AMOP which delivers single-pane-of-glass management across every carrier, every SIM, and every connected device, with automated rate plan optimization, and the expertise to ensure you’re never overpaying again.
No six-month implementation. No $500K commitment. Just clarity, savings, and a partner who works for you not the carrier.
Get a free telecom consultation and find out how much you could save.
Most businesses save 15–45% through rate plan optimization, zombie line elimination, and billing error recovery. The exact amount depends on line count, carrier mix, and how long since the environment was last optimized.
A provider that manages your services across multiple carriers without being financially tied to any one of them. Their recommendations are based on your best interest, not a carrier’s sales goals.
A TEM focuses on spend visibility. Managed mobility services go further — encompassing provisioning, rate plan optimization, SIM lifecycle management, billing automation, and ongoing carrier management.
Compare rate plan costs against actual usage per line. If average consumption is below half the plan allowance, you’re likely overpaying. Other red flags: lines with zero usage, invoices growing without headcount growth, and no consolidated view across carriers.