In such a situation, it is a virtual certainty that the carrier will take the business direct, and the partner will lose the recurring revenue, Saxby said. "This is an area where you as an IT partner can better understand the risk," he said.

Saxby was making it clear to MSPs and solution providers that they much understand they are leaving revenue on the table by letting someone else come in to handle the connectivity services, said David Brimley, senior vice president of Phoenix NAP, a Phoenix-based provider of colocation, data center, and cloud services which partners with Advantage Communications Group.

"Service providers have an impact with their clients," Brimley told CRN. "They can recommend clients use a specific carriers or specific connectivity types from point-to-point to MPLS. But a lot of solution providers are not benefiting from telecoms. The big issue is frustration with the carriers, who are too big. It's better to work with master agents."

Large carriers like ATT, Verizon, and CenturyLink have engineering resources to help partners, but they also compete with partners, Brimley said.

"But more often than not, the big carriers are focused on large enterprises, and not on the space served by typical solution providers," he said.