Holiday hours of operation

Holiday hours of operation

With the holiday season approaching, we would like to remind clients of our holiday hours of operation.

Support coverage

blueAPACHE will continue providing monitoring and emergency support 24 hours a day, 7 days a week throughout the holidays, in addition to standard support on all business days.

Our operational support teams will be available on business days through this period — excluding gazetted national public holidays — and are on call for escalated priority support at all other times.

What that means in practice

The distinction between the tiers is the part worth understanding before you need it.

Monitoring never stops. If a monitored system fails at 3am on a public holiday, the alert is raised and acted on. What changes over the period is the availability of routine, non-urgent work — a request that would ordinarily be handled the same business day may wait until the next one.

The practical guidance for clients is therefore straightforward: raise anything routine before the period begins, and use the priority path for anything genuinely urgent rather than holding it because it feels like a quiet time of year.

The industry network provisioning embargo

The industry network provisioning embargo commences 16 December 2016 and continues through to 9 January 2017.

This limits the provisioning of new networks across the industry — and it includes extensions and reconfiguration, not only new connections.

During the embargo, blueAPACHE will be minimising network changes to emergency work only, to mitigate the possibility of outages.

Why the embargo exists, and why we follow it

The embargo is set annually by the telecommunications carriage providers, not by blueAPACHE. It is a change freeze applied at industry scale: carriers suspend changes to physical network infrastructure across the period when their own field workforce, their subcontractors and their customers' technical staff are largely on leave — and when a fault would take longest to resolve.

blueAPACHE's decision to minimise its own network changes over the same window follows the same logic. A change made during a period of reduced staffing, with reduced carrier support behind it, carries a materially higher risk of an outage that takes longer to fix. A change that would take two hours to unwind in November can take two days to unwind in late December.

Emergency work continues throughout. If something breaks and fixing it requires a change, the change is made.

What is and is not affected

Affected: new copper, fibre, NBN and wholesale broadband provisioning; extensions to existing services; network reconfiguration; and any service delivery requiring hardware or software upgrades on carrier networks.

Not affected: fixed wireless services, which sit outside the embargo entirely; support and fault resolution on existing services; and blueAPACHE's Managed Services, Hybrid and Private Cloud, IaaS, PaaS, SaaS, DRaaS, SIP and VPN, Software and Solution, and Consulting and Procurement services.

Fixed wireless is the useful exception to know about. For an organisation with an unavoidable January requirement — a new site, an acquisition, an office move with a fixed date — fixed wireless can serve as an interim connection while the permanent service is provisioned after the freeze lifts.

After the embargo

All activities recommence when the embargo period ends. Expect some delay as the carriage providers work through the accumulated backlog: three weeks of suspended provisioning does not clear in the first week of January, and orders placed during the embargo join a queue behind those already in flight when it began.

In practice, a service ordered in mid-December should be planned against a February expectation rather than a January one.

Planning checklist

For organisations with work in or immediately after this window:

1. Identify every site with a change in the period — new sites, relocations, closures, bandwidth changes, and anything currently mid-provisioning
2. Submit routine requests before the period begins, so they are not competing with the backlog afterwards
3. Confirm what "finalised" requires for any carriage order — an order awaiting a site contact, a signed authority or a confirmed address does not hold its place in the queue
4. Consider fixed wireless as an interim where a date genuinely cannot move
5. Do not schedule dependent work — a fit-out, a staff move, a go-live — against a connectivity date falling inside or immediately after the freeze
6. Know your escalation path, and who in your organisation is authorised to use it

Frequently asked questions

What support is available over the holiday period? Monitoring and emergency support continue 24 hours a day, 7 days a week throughout the holidays, including public holidays. Standard operational support runs on business days excluding gazetted national public holidays, and escalated priority support is on call at all other times.

What actually changes? The availability of routine, non-urgent work. A request that would ordinarily be handled the same business day may wait until the next one. Monitoring itself never stops — a monitored system failing at 3am on a public holiday still raises an alert that is acted on.

What is the practical advice for clients? Raise anything routine before the period begins, and use the priority path for anything genuinely urgent rather than holding it because it feels like a quiet time of year.

What is the industry network provisioning embargo? An annual change freeze set by the telecommunications carriage providers, not by blueAPACHE. For the period described here it ran from 16 December 2016 to 9 January 2017. It limits provisioning of new networks across the industry and includes extensions and reconfiguration, not only new connections.

Why does the embargo exist? Because carriers suspend changes to physical network infrastructure during the period when their own field workforce, their subcontractors and their customers' technical staff are largely on leave — and when a fault would take longest to resolve.

Why does blueAPACHE minimise its own network changes too? Same logic. A change made during reduced staffing, with reduced carrier support behind it, carries a materially higher risk of an outage that takes longer to fix. As the page puts it, a change that would take two hours to unwind in November can take two days to unwind in late December. Emergency work continues throughout.

What is affected by the embargo? New copper, fibre, NBN and wholesale broadband provisioning; extensions to existing services; network reconfiguration; and any service delivery requiring hardware or software upgrades on carrier networks.

What is not affected? Fixed wireless services, which sit outside the embargo entirely; support and fault resolution on existing services; and blueAPACHE's Managed Services, Hybrid and Private Cloud, IaaS, PaaS, SaaS, DRaaS, SIP and VPN, Software and Solution, and Consulting and Procurement services.

How long does the backlog take to clear afterwards? Longer than the first week of January. Three weeks of suspended provisioning does not clear immediately, and orders placed during the embargo join a queue behind those already in flight when it began. The page's guidance is that a service ordered in mid-December should be planned against a February expectation rather than a January one.

Are the embargo dates the same every year? No. They are set annually by the carriage providers and change each year. The dates on this page apply to the 2016–2017 period; confirm current-year dates and cut-offs with your account manager.

Related

• Connectivity — including fixed wireless
• Core network and data centre interconnect
• Support
• Support and service levels
• Managed services
• Cloud services
• Disaster recovery as a service
• Procurement
• Consulting and advisory
• Offices and contact
• Contact

Questions

If you have any questions about support or the provisioning of works over the holiday period, please contact your Account Manager.

Embargo dates are set annually by the carriage providers and change each year. The dates above apply to the 2016–2017 period. Confirm current-year dates and cut-offs with your Account Manager.

Knowledge Base