An office move internet checklist should begin before the lease. Treat moving offices internet setup as part of site selection: once the lease is signed and the move-in date is fixed, a failed serviceability check becomes an expensive facilities problem instead of a site-selection fact.
Work backward from the date people must operate in the new suite. Protect an overlap period, allow carrier engineering and construction to drive their own schedule, and give phone porting, public IP changes, and landlord access separate owners.
Before signing: verify serviceability at the exact suite
A carrier availability result is useful for screening addresses, but it is not a commitment to deliver. Ask for written, product-specific serviceability at the full street address, building, floor, and suite. The carrier should identify the access medium, bandwidth profile, handoff, demarc location, delivery assumptions, estimated interval based on engineering, and any known construction.
Do this before signing the lease. If connectivity is essential, involve real-estate counsel in making carrier access, acceptable service, construction exposure, and landlord cooperation part of the lease negotiation or contingency language. A sales representative's map pin does not allocate construction risk.
For multiple locations, screen every address in one request. Checking several addresses takes no longer than checking one at the availability stage, but each suite will still need its own survey, order, access plan, and acceptance record.
Why “fiber in the building” is not fiber to your suite
A landlord may be completely sincere and still use “fiber” too loosely. The building might have a carrier cable at the minimum point of entry, equipment serving another tenant, dark fiber owned by someone else, or a carrier whose available product does not match your requirement.
Delivery to your suite may still require:
- A path from the street to the building entrance and minimum point of entry
- Space and power for carrier equipment
- Capacity in the existing cable or a new splice
- Riser, conduit, or tray from a telecom room to your floor
- A cross-connect through landlord or building-provider facilities
- Inside extension from the floor closet to your network room
- Permits, escorts, certificates of insurance, restoration work, or after-hours access
These items can create special construction charges. The carrier may absorb some work, require an upfront contribution, amortize it into the service, or reject the build. The landlord may also charge for riser use, cross-connects, engineering review, or supervised access. Require both parties to state costs and boundaries in writing before treating a quote as complete.
Ask the landlord about the MPOE, demarc, and riser
The minimum point of entry is where outside communications facilities enter the property. The service demarcation point is where the carrier's responsibility ends for the ordered service. They may be in the same room, but do not assume that they are or that either is in your suite.
Put these questions to the landlord or property manager in writing, and require written answers:
- Where are the MPOE, carrier rooms, floor telecom closets, and proposed suite demarc?
- Which carriers have active facilities, and which products are actually delivered to current tenants?
- Who owns and manages the riser, conduit, innerduct, cross-connects, and inside wiring?
- Is there a building riser vendor, and are its fees or work rules mandatory?
- What access hours, escort rules, insurance documents, method-of-procedure reviews, and notice are required?
- Is pathway capacity available from the carrier room to the suite, and who approves core drilling or new conduit?
- What rack space, grounding, cooling, and backed-up power can carrier equipment use?
- Who restores walls, firestopping, ceilings, and penetrations after work?
Send the answers to every bidder. A carrier cannot produce a dependable construction plan while the property access assumptions remain unknown.
Work backward from move-in
Use relative phases because carrier and construction lead times vary by address. Put the actual dates from the chosen carrier's written plan into your project schedule; do not fill the plan with a standard interval that nobody has accepted.
As early as possible, before lease signing
Screen carriers and diverse access possibilities. Get suite-level engineering started, inspect telecom spaces, identify landlord constraints, and review the existing ISP and phone contracts for term ends and notice windows. Decide what connectivity is a condition of taking the space.
Once the site and delivery assumptions are accepted
Select the primary and any backup service, sign orders only after reviewing construction assumptions, and name the contacts authorized to approve changes. Confirm the requested demarc, handoff, IP allocation, managed equipment, billing start trigger, acceptance process, and escalation path.
While carrier and building work is underway
Track surveys, permits, entrance work, riser work, inside extension, equipment delivery, and carrier testing as separate milestones. Hold a recurring construction review with the carrier, landlord, general contractor, and network owner. A promised completion date without completed dependencies is not a recovery plan.
After handoff, before people move
Install the firewall, switching, wireless, voice, and monitoring stack. Test the new circuit from the LAN and from external networks. Stage new public IPs, VPN endpoints, DNS, allowlists, and call routing. Document rollback and confirm that the old office remains operational.
On the move-in date
Operate both locations where practical. Cut over controlled groups, watch applications and voice quality, validate inbound and outbound calling, and keep a decision-maker available for rollback. Do not return old carrier equipment or release numbers during the live move.
After the new site is accepted
After business acceptance, submit or complete the old-service disconnect, return equipment, and audit the final bill. Remove obsolete firewall rules, VPN objects, DNS entries, monitoring targets, and temporary forwarding only after no dependency remains.
Who owns what as move-in approaches
| Relative point | IT and security | Facilities and landlord | Carrier or phone provider | Operations and leadership |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| As early as possible, before lease signing | Define applications, resiliency, IP, voice, and security needs | Expose MPOE, riser, access rules, pathway, power, and costs | Perform address and suite engineering | Decide whether connectivity risk is acceptable for the lease |
| Once the site and delivery assumptions are accepted | Approve technical design and demarc | Approve access and construction method | Issue final order, assumptions, milestones, and escalation path | Approve commercial term and construction exposure |
| While carrier and building work is underway | Track dependencies and prepare LAN edge | Provide escorts, rooms, permits, and contractor coordination | Build, install, and report blockers | Resolve cost or schedule decisions quickly |
| After handoff, before people move | Configure and test internet, VPN, DNS, security, and voice | Confirm suite readiness and move access | Complete acceptance tests and port readiness | Approve go or no-go criteria and business communications |
| On the move-in date | Execute cutover, monitor, and preserve rollback | Support physical access and cabling fixes | Staff escalation and call-routing changes | Sequence teams and decide on rollback if criteria fail |
| After the new site is accepted | Remove temporary configuration after validation | Confirm restoration and old-suite obligations | Confirm disconnect, equipment return, and final billing | Accept service and close remaining vendor actions |
Every row needs one named person, not only a company or department. The table is a starting RACI, not proof that a party accepted the obligation.
Keep an overlap period
Do not cancel the old circuit because the new carrier says construction is complete. “Complete” may mean the cable reached the building, while your handoff, IP routing, firewall, or applications remain untested.
Maintain old and new service through installation, remediation, cutover, and an observation period based on business risk. During overlap you can move user groups, direct selected applications, test failover, and reverse the routing without sending everyone home. Include overlap cost in the move budget and reconcile it with the old provider's notice window and early termination calculation.
For resilience, verify actual path diversity. Two carrier names can share the same entrance conduit, riser, local fiber, or upstream facility. Ask each provider to document what it can about the physical path, then inspect the building portions with facilities.
Move static IPs, VPNs, and DNS deliberately
Create a dependency register for every old public IP. Search firewalls, DNS zones, VPN configurations, partner allowlists, SaaS restrictions, remote monitoring, mail relays, certificate validation, vendor remote access, and hard-coded application settings.
Assume the new circuit receives a new block unless portability is confirmed in writing. Configure new firewall objects and VPN peers in parallel. Lower relevant DNS time-to-live values far enough in advance for the old value to expire before the change, using the actual current TTL to set the schedule. Give third parties a change window and require confirmation; an emailed request is not proof that an allowlist was updated.
After cutover, test from external networks as well as inside the office. Keep the old endpoint available for rollback until critical partners, remote users, inbound services, monitoring, and backups work through the new path.
Give phone porting its own timeline
Build a number inventory and reconcile it to the losing provider's records. Include main numbers, direct numbers, toll-free service, fax, conference, alarm-related lines, and any remote forwarding. Submit port data exactly as the carrier holds it and do not cancel the losing service while the port is pending.
The new provider can request a date, but the losing provider must validate the record and release the numbers. Do not make an unconfirmed port request a dependency for opening the office; wait for the providers to confirm the accepted cutover and keep a forwarding or alternate-answer plan ready.
Configure the new phone system and test with temporary numbers first. Update emergency-service and dispatchable-location records for the new office, including devices that can move. Decide whether numbers port before, during, or after the physical move based on a written call-routing and fallback plan. A cloud platform may support both sites during transition; a physical PRI or analog service requires more deliberate sequencing.
Confirm what the port will disconnect automatically. A completed main-number port may leave data, fax, or other voice products billing, or it may affect a bundle in ways the phone team did not expect.
Check the address before the lease becomes the constraint
You can check which carriers report service at the new address while the site is still under evaluation. InventiveHQ sources quotes through carrier channel agreements; the selected carrier installs and bills the circuit, and sourcing costs the buyer nothing because carriers fund the channel from the same budget as their direct sales teams.
Use the result to start engineering and commercial diligence, then require suite-level confirmation and a written construction plan. The best move-day recovery plan is a verified circuit that was treated as a lease dependency from the beginning.