sourcing.cisomarketplace.com / mobility-audit
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Carrier Expense Audit · Free Tool

Find the waste in your carrier bills

Audit wireless, wireline, and Starlink/satellite spend for the patterns that hide in every multi-line bill: zombie lines, oversized plans, unused features, pooled-data inefficiency, dormant circuits. Typical mid-market savings: 15-35% in week one.

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Why this is the highest-ROI audit in IT: carrier waste compounds silently. A zombie line at $50/month is $600/year — boring. Multiply across 200 lines where 8% are zombies, add unlimited plans on devices using 2 GB/month, add international roaming charges on dormant devices, add Starlink subscriptions for sites that moved, and the typical mid-market organization is leaking $80K-$300K/year. The fixes are mostly paperwork.

Wireless Inventory

Cellular voice + data plans (AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, regional carriers).

Voice + data lines. Include hotspots, tablets, IoT cards.
Typical mid-market range: $45-85/line/mo blended.
Drives pooled-data and unlimited-plan assumptions.

Waste Patterns Present

Check anything that's plausibly true. The audit estimates dollar impact from each.

Zombie lines (paying but no usage)
Lines on the bill that haven't sent or received in 60+ days. Former employees, broken devices, retired hardware. Typically 5-12% of total lines.
Saves ~$40/line × est. zombie %
Unlimited plans on low-usage lines
Users on unlimited plans averaging under 3 GB/month. Right-sizing to tiered plans cuts $15-30/line/mo.
Saves $20/line × ~25% of fleet
International roaming charges / monthly add-ons
Travel add-ons that stay on the account after the trip. Or pay-per-use roaming on lines without a travel pass that should have one.
Saves $10-50/line in affected accounts
Pooled-data inefficiency
Lines on individual plans that should be in a shared/pooled bucket, or pool sized 30%+ above peak actual use.
Saves 8-15% of total wireless spend
Unused features (insurance, music, navigation)
Carrier-bundled features on lines where the user already has the equivalent (Spotify, Apple One, Google One, separate insurance).
Saves $5-15/line × affected lines
Taxes + surcharges over 25% of line cost
Some surcharges and regulatory fees are negotiable on enterprise contracts. Most companies don't audit and don't push back.
Saves 3-6% of total bill
Contract past renewal date with no review
Auto-renewed at original rates while carrier promotional rates dropped. Common after M&A or IT leadership transitions.
Saves 10-25% via renegotiation

Wireline Inventory

Internet circuits, MPLS, SIP trunks, copper POTS, ethernet.

Internet, MPLS, SIP trunks, POTS — count separately if mixed.
Blends fiber, broadband, MPLS, copper. Typical $200-1500.
Legacy copper has the highest waste-recovery potential.

Waste Patterns Present

Most wireline waste is decade-old contracts no one renegotiated.

Ghost circuits at closed / moved locations
Circuits billing for sites that closed, sold, or relocated. M&A activity in particular generates these. Carriers don't volunteer to find them.
Saves 100% of ghost circuit cost
Oversized circuits vs actual utilization
100 Mbps fiber at sites averaging 15 Mbps peak. Right-sizing or moving to broadband saves significantly with no SLA impact.
Saves 25-50% per affected circuit
Legacy POTS lines past FCC sunset pricing
FCC eliminated POTS rate regulation in 2024-25, so legacy copper lines now cost $80-200+/line. POTS-replacement-over-cellular cuts this dramatically.
Saves $60-150/line/mo
MPLS at sites that could run SD-WAN over broadband
MPLS at $1,500/site can often be replaced by dual broadband + SD-WAN at $300-600/site with equivalent or better performance.
Saves 40-70% per migrated site
Duplicate circuits from M&A / vendor consolidation
Two ISP relationships at the same site, two SIP providers, redundant DIAs. Common after acquisitions where IT didn't consolidate carriers.
Saves 50% of duplicates
Auto-renewed contracts at old rates
Carrier list prices have dropped 15-30% on fiber over the last 3 years, but auto-renewed customers stay on old rates unless they push.
Saves 15-25% via renegotiation
Local taxes + fees beyond contracted rate
Local franchise fees, telecom taxes, regulatory recovery charges. Some are negotiable on enterprise agreements or pre-tax-exempt for non-profits.
Saves 4-8% of total bill

Starlink / Satellite Inventory

Starlink Business, Mobile/Roam, Maritime; HughesNet, Viasat, Iridium fleet.

Total active subscriptions across all satellite providers.
Starlink Business $250-500, Mobile $50-250, Maritime $250-1,000+.
Drives which waste patterns apply.

Waste Patterns Present

Starlink waste looks different from cellular — but the dollar leakage is just as real.

Wrong service tier for actual use
Paying Business rates ($250-500) where Stationary or Residential ($120-150) would work. Paying Mobile/Roam ($165) on equipment that's now permanently mounted.
Saves $80-250/unit/mo
Dormant or returned hardware still billing
Equipment that went back to inventory but the line stayed active. Common with seasonal use, project-based deployments, asset transfers between sites.
Saves 100% of dormant line cost
Maritime rates on docked / inland vessels
Maritime tier ($250-1000+) running on vessels that haven't left port in 60+ days or were moved to inland storage. Mobile or Business tier would be cheaper.
Saves $100-500/vessel/mo
Priority data add-ons that don't match usage
Pay-per-GB priority data ($1-2/GB) accumulated when standard data would have sufficed. Or unused priority data allotments running on a paid-per-GB plan.
Saves 10-30% on data add-ons
Starlink + cellular at same location, both paid full
Failover designs that pay full prices for both. Properly configured, the cellular line can be a lower-cost standby plan rather than active service.
Saves $30-100/site/mo
Legacy GEO sat (HughesNet, Viasat) still billing post-Starlink switch
Old GEO satellite contracts that didn't get terminated when Starlink was deployed. Auto-renews especially common with multi-year legacy contracts.
Saves 100% of legacy sat cost
Iridium / Inmarsat lines for non-critical voice
Iridium GO! / push-to-talk subscriptions at $80-200/line/month maintained for redundancy but rarely used. Often can be consolidated to a single shared device.
Saves 60-80% via consolidation
Estimated Monthly Savings Range
$0 – $0 / month
$0 – $0 annually
That's 0% of your $0 total monthly carrier spend.
Wireless
Current monthly $0
Estimated savings $0 – $0
0 patterns flagged
Wireline
Current monthly $0
Estimated savings $0 – $0
0 patterns flagged
Starlink / Satellite
Current monthly $0
Estimated savings $0 – $0
0 patterns flagged

Top Findings (Ranked by Dollar Impact)

Highest-impact waste patterns first. Most can be fixed without changing carriers — just paperwork and audit cycles.

Current Spend vs Projected (After Audit)

Mid-point of the estimated savings range applied to current monthly spend.

📄 Download the audit report

PDF includes your full per-category breakdown, ranked findings with estimated dollar impact per finding, and a 10-step internal audit checklist your finance team can run against the actual invoice line items.

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Recommended next step

Get a TEM provider to run this audit on your actual bills

Our sourcing diagnostic matches you with telecom expense management (TEM) and mobility management partners that work on contingency — typically 25-40% of year-one savings, with no upfront cost. Most engagements recover the audit fee in month one.

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