If you sell telecom, cloud, or cybersecurity services and you don’t work directly for a carrier, you probably work with a TSD. Maybe you didn’t know it was called that. Maybe your boss calls it a “master agent” or a “distributor.” Same thing, different decade. The TSD (technology services distributor) is the entity that sits between you and the carriers you sell. It handles a staggering amount of the operational work that makes your business possible.

Here’s what a TSD actually does, why you’d use one, and how to pick the right one.

What does a TSD actually do?

A TSD is a distribution company that holds direct contracts with dozens, sometimes hundreds, of technology suppliers. We’re talking carriers like AT&T, Lumen, and Comcast Business. UCaaS vendors like RingCentral and Zoom. Cybersecurity companies like Palo Alto and CrowdStrike. Cloud platforms like AWS and Azure. Instead of you signing contracts with each of these suppliers individually, the TSD aggregates access to all of them under one roof.

Think of it like a wholesale distributor for services instead of physical goods. Best Buy doesn’t negotiate individually with every electronics manufacturer for shelf space terms. They work through distribution. Same concept, different product.

So what do you actually get?

The most obvious piece is supplier access. A mid-sized TSD typically has contracts with 200+ suppliers. Telarus, one of the largest, has over 300. You get access to all of them through a single relationship, which means you can quote AT&T fiber, Comcast SD-WAN, RingCentral UCaaS, and CrowdStrike endpoint protection from the same portal. No signing 200 separate contracts.

But the place where TSDs really earn their keep is quoting and engineering tools. Building an accurate telecom quote is brutal. You need to check serviceability, compare pricing across carriers, handle different contract terms, and put it all into a proposal the customer won’t laugh at. TSDs build (or license) platforms that automate most of this. Telarus has GeoQuote. Avant has Pathfinder. These tools let you pull real-time pricing from multiple carriers in minutes instead of submitting individual requests and waiting three days per carrier.

Then there’s commission tracking. If you sell services through five different carriers, you’d normally get five separate commission statements, each formatted differently, each paying on a different schedule. The TSD consolidates all of that into one statement and one payment. They track your residuals, fight with carriers when payments are wrong (which happens constantly), and give you a single dashboard to see what you’re earning. I cannot overstate how much sanity this preserves.

Some TSDs also offer consolidated billing, where your customers get one bill for multiple services instead of separate invoices from each carrier. For a mid-market company juggling four vendors, this alone can close a deal.

On the operations side, TSDs have provisioning teams that push orders through carrier systems. If you’ve ever tried to get a complex MPLS order through AT&T’s internal process without someone running interference, you know why this matters. The TSD’s ops team knows which carrier portal to use, which forms to fill out, and which internal contact to call when an order is stuck. They do this all day, every day. You don’t want to.

Most major TSDs also provide marketing support (co-branded materials, event sponsorships, lead gen) and training to help you sell product categories you haven’t touched before. Avant’s annual partner event draws thousands. Telarus runs regional roadshows. Selling cybersecurity is different from selling POTS lines, and good TSDs make sure you don’t have to fake expertise.

How do TSDs make money?

Here’s the part that makes people suspicious until they understand it.

When you sell a deal through a TSD, the carrier pays a commission. The TSD takes a cut (typically called an override) and passes the rest to you. The standard split in the industry runs between 80/20 and 90/10, meaning you keep 80-90% and the TSD keeps 10-20%.

On a $10,000 MRC deal where the carrier pays a 10% residual commission, the total monthly commission pool is $1,000. If your split is 85/15, you get $850/month and the TSD gets $150/month. That commission keeps paying as long as the customer keeps the service, which could be 3-7 years for a typical enterprise contract.

Some TSDs also earn bonuses, SPIFs, and backend incentives from carriers that they may or may not pass through to agents. Ask about this. The best TSDs are transparent about it. The worst ones pocket it and hope you don’t notice.

Who are the major TSDs?

The industry has consolidated hard over the past decade, but several major players dominate.

Telarus is the largest independent TSD, with over 300 supplier relationships and a reputation for strong engineering support. Their GeoQuote tool is widely considered one of the best in the channel. They focus on helping agents sell complex solutions (SD-WAN, cybersecurity, cloud) rather than just connectivity.

Avant positions itself as a premium platform, investing heavily in technology (their Pathfinder platform) and marketing. They run one of the channel’s biggest annual events and have been aggressive about expanding into cybersecurity and cloud.

Intelisys, now part of ScanSource, is one of the oldest names in the business. ScanSource acquired them to combine traditional hardware distribution with services distribution, a move that signaled where the whole industry was heading.

AppDirect took a different approach, building a commerce platform that powers subscription marketplaces for service providers and advisors. They’re more technology-company-that-does-distribution than traditional-distributor-that-built-technology.

Sandler Partners has a strong reputation on the West Coast and focuses on white-glove support for mid-market and enterprise-focused advisors. Known for high-touch engineering and sales support.

TBI is one of the legacy players with deep roots in traditional telecom. They’ve evolved their portfolio but maintain strong carrier relationships.

There are smaller, regional, or niche TSDs too. Some specialize in specific verticals (healthcare, government) or specific product categories (cybersecurity-only distribution). The market has room for specialists, and honestly, a specialist who knows your vertical cold can be more useful than a giant with 300 suppliers and no depth.

The agent-TSD-carrier relationship, explained simply

Here’s how a typical deal flows:

  1. You (the agent/advisor) find a customer who needs, say, SD-WAN and UCaaS.
  2. You log into your TSD’s quoting platform and pull pricing from multiple carriers.
  3. You present options to the customer, help them choose, and submit the order through the TSD.
  4. The TSD’s operations team pushes the order through the carrier’s systems and manages provisioning.
  5. The carrier delivers the service and bills the customer directly.
  6. The carrier pays the commission to the TSD.
  7. The TSD takes their override and pays you your share.
  8. This commission recurs monthly for the life of the contract.

The customer usually doesn’t know the TSD exists. They see you (the advisor) and the carrier. The TSD is invisible infrastructure.

Why not just go direct with carriers?

This is the question every new agent asks, and it’s reasonable. If the TSD takes 10-20% of your commission, why not cut them out and keep everything?

Because the math doesn’t work for most people.

Most carriers have minimum production requirements for direct agents. AT&T isn’t going to give you a direct contract if you’re doing $20,000/month in MRC. They’ll tell you to work through a TSD. The TSD qualifies because they aggregate production from hundreds of agents.

Then there’s back-office cost. If you go direct with 15 carriers, you need to manage 15 contracts, 15 commission statements, 15 portals, and 15 relationships. That’s a full-time operations person, maybe two. A good ops hire costs $55,000-$75,000/year. If your override to the TSD costs less than that, you’re paying more to cut them out.

Building your own multi-carrier quoting platform isn’t realistic either. Licensing one independently costs more than the override in most cases. The TSD spreads that cost across their entire agent base.

Carrier leverage matters more than people think. When an order goes sideways (and orders go sideways all the time), a TSD with $500M in aggregate billing has more pull with the carrier’s channel team than a solo agent doing $200K. The TSD can escalate. You get voicemail.

And then there’s commission protection. Carriers sometimes try to “direct” deals, meaning they cut the agent out and sell to the customer themselves. A good TSD has contractual protections and the relationship muscle to fight this on your behalf. A solo agent has a phone number that nobody answers.

There are situations where going direct makes sense. If you’re doing $5M+ in annual revenue with a single carrier, you have the volume to negotiate your own deal and the operational scale to manage it. Some large advisory firms go direct with their top five carriers and use a TSD for the long tail. That hybrid model works at scale.

But if you’re doing under $2M in total revenue, going direct is almost certainly a net negative. The override you’d save is less than the operational cost and lost productivity you’d absorb.

How to pick the right TSD

Not all TSDs are interchangeable. Here’s what to evaluate.

Start with commission splits. Get the exact numbers in writing. Not just the headline split, but whether the TSD passes through SPIFs, backend bonuses, and accelerators. A TSD offering 85% but passing through all SPIFs might pay you more than one offering 90% but keeping the bonuses.

Check their supplier portfolio. Does the TSD have contracts with the specific suppliers you need? If you sell heavily into healthcare, do they carry the HIPAA-compliant cloud and security vendors your customers require?

Use the quoting tools before you sign. Some are good. Some are clunky nightmares that add time to your sales process instead of saving it. Ask for a demo and actually run a test quote. If they won’t let you, that tells you something.

If you sell complex solutions (SD-WAN, SASE, hybrid cloud), ask about engineering support. How many engineers does the TSD have? What’s the response time? Can you get on a call with a customer and a TSD engineer within 24 hours?

Read the contract terms, especially the exit clause. Some TSDs lock agents into multi-year contracts with punitive exit provisions. Others allow 30-day termination. And some claim ownership of your book of business, meaning if you leave, they keep the residual commissions on the customers you sold. This is the single most important clause in any TSD agreement. If the TSD owns your book, you’re building their asset, not yours.

Finally, evaluate the culture and support. This sounds soft, but it matters. Some TSDs treat sub-$500K agents as an afterthought. Others have dedicated channel managers for agents at every production level. Talk to three or four agents who already work with the TSD before you sign. Ask them what happens when something goes wrong.

You don’t work for the TSD

One thing that trips people up: you are not an employee. You’re an independent contractor or a company with a distribution agreement. The TSD doesn’t set your hours, tell you what to sell, or own your customer relationships (unless you signed a bad contract, see above).

This independence is the entire point. You choose which suppliers to recommend. You set your own margins. You build your own brand. The TSD is infrastructure. Valuable infrastructure, yes. But infrastructure.

That said, the agents who thrive tend to treat their TSD like a strategic partner. They use the tools, attend the trainings, build relationships with the engineering and ops teams, and give the TSD a heads-up on big deals. The agents who struggle treat the TSD like a commission processing center and then wonder why nobody picks up when they need help.

Your TSD is the most important business relationship you have outside of your customers. Pick the right one, invest in the relationship, and squeeze every resource they offer. That override they’re collecting? Make them earn it.

Master Agent vs TSD vs Distributor: What’s the Difference? — The channel uses four terms for the same role. The next guide in this series breaks down where each term came from, what (if anything) separates them, and which one you should use today.