Holiday hours of operation.

Holiday hours of operation

A reminder to clients of blueAPACHE's operating hours over the Christmas and New Year period — what changes, what does not, and what the seasonal telecommunications embargo means for any work involving carriers.

Support coverage at a glance

The telecommunications industry embargo

This is the constraint most clients are unaware of until it affects them.

Each year the Australian telecommunications industry applies a change embargo over the peak season. In the 2016–17 period it ran from 16 December to 9 January. During an embargo, carriers suspend non-essential provisioning and change activity on their networks to protect stability at the time of highest national demand — retail trading, logistics, travel and payments all peak simultaneously.

What the embargo affects

• New service provisioning and activations
• Bandwidth upgrades and downgrades
• Site relocations and cutovers
• Non-urgent carrier-side configuration change

What it does not affect

• Fault restoration. Faults on existing services are worked throughout the embargo. The embargo restricts change, not repair.
• Fixed wireless services, which are excepted from the embargo and can generally still be provisioned during the period — which is one reason fixed wireless is a useful option for an urgent December requirement.
• blueAPACHE's own platform and managed services, which are unaffected.

What this means for your planning

If a connectivity change matters to your business in January — a new site, an upgraded link, a move — it needs to be ordered before the embargo window, not during it. Orders submitted in late December queue behind everything else deferred, and the post-embargo backlog extends lead times well into the new year. Speak to your account manager in November.

What blueAPACHE continues to do

Monitoring does not pause. Systems are watched continuously, alerts are actioned, and emergency response is staffed across the full period including every public holiday. If your business trades over the holidays — retail, hospitality, logistics, healthcare — this is precisely the period when your infrastructure is under the most load and the least internal supervision.

Where blueAPACHE manages your environment, the following continue uninterrupted:

• Infrastructure and application monitoring across managed systems
• Backup job monitoring and failure alerting
• Security monitoring and incident response
• Carrier fault escalation on existing services
• Emergency change where required to restore service

Contact details

Always log through the service desk rather than contacting an individual engineer directly — the queue is staffed continuously; individuals take leave.

For businesses that trade through the period

Organisations whose peak is the holiday period face the opposite problem from those that shut down: maximum load, minimum staff.

A short pre-season checklist:

1. Confirm capacity headroom on the systems that carry seasonal load — e-commerce platforms, payment integration, point of sale, warehouse and dispatch systems.
2. Know who answers at 3am. Document the escalation path, on both sides, and test that the numbers reach a person.
3. Freeze change during peak trade, and be strict about it. The most common cause of a peak-trading outage is a change made during peak trading.
4. Verify failover works rather than assuming it does. Redundancy that has never been tested is a design intention, not a capability.
5. Watch certificate and licence expiries that fall inside the window.

For businesses that close

The risks are different but no smaller: slower detection of intrusions, weaker verification of payment and access requests, and unattended systems running scheduled work with nobody watching. Nominate holiday authorisers before you close, test a restore rather than trusting a green dashboard, and brief staff that no bank-detail change is actioned without a phone call to a known number.

Frequently asked questions

What support continues unchanged over the holidays? Proactive infrastructure monitoring and emergency or critical incident response, both 24/7 including every gazetted public holiday. Escalated priority support remains available on call.

What is reduced or paused? Business-day operational support runs at reduced staffing and is unavailable on gazetted public holidays. Project and change delivery is paused other than pre-agreed work. Carrier-dependent connectivity work is subject to the industry embargo.

What is the telecommunications industry embargo? An annual change embargo applied across the Australian telecommunications industry over the peak season — in the 2016–17 period, 16 December to 9 January. Carriers suspend non-essential provisioning and change activity to protect network stability at the point of highest national demand, when retail trading, logistics, travel and payments peak together.

What does the embargo stop? New service provisioning and activations, bandwidth upgrades and downgrades, site relocations and cutovers, and non-urgent carrier-side configuration change.

What continues during the embargo? Fault restoration on existing services, because the embargo restricts change rather than repair. Fixed wireless services are excepted and can generally still be provisioned, which makes fixed wireless a useful option for an urgent December requirement. blueAPACHE's own platform and managed services are unaffected.

When should a January connectivity change be ordered? Before the embargo window — the page suggests speaking to your account manager in November. Orders submitted in late December queue behind everything else deferred, and the post-embargo backlog extends lead times well into the new year.

What does blueAPACHE keep running while clients are away? Infrastructure and application monitoring across managed systems, backup job monitoring and failure alerting, security monitoring and incident response, carrier fault escalation on existing services, and emergency change where required to restore service.

What should a business that trades through the period do? Confirm capacity headroom on the systems carrying seasonal load — e-commerce, payment integration, point of sale, warehouse and dispatch; document and test the escalation path so the numbers reach a person at 3am; freeze change during peak trade, since the most common cause of a peak-trading outage is a change made during peak trading; verify failover actually works, because untested redundancy is a design intention rather than a capability; and watch certificate and licence expiries inside the window.

And a business that closes? The risks differ but are no smaller — slower detection of intrusions, weaker verification of payment and access requests, and unattended systems running scheduled work. Nominate holiday authorisers before closing, test a restore rather than trusting a green dashboard, and brief staff that no bank-detail change is actioned without a phone call to a known number.

Related

• Support
• Support and service levels
• Connectivity — including fixed wireless
• Core network and data centre interconnect
• Managed services
• Managed detection and response
• Security services
• Offsite backup as a service
• Disaster recovery as a service
• Retail and consumer services
• Transport and logistics
• Offices and contact
• Contact

Thank you

Our thanks to every client for your partnership through the year. We wish you a safe, successful and restful holiday season.

blueAPACHE has supported Australian organisations since 1998 and today employs more than 280 staff across offices in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, London and Miami, operating three geographically diverse data centres on Australia's eastern seaboard.

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