Local Fibre Companies (LFCs) will be implementing a level of change restriction on some parts of their networks environment over the 2023-24 Christmas holiday period.
They do this to minimise the risk of customer impacting events occurring at a time of reduced staffing levels across their organisation and suppliers.
All the information available to date has been added to this blog post, if additional information becomes available it will be added to this blog post.
New Zealand
Australia
The data below has been gathered from the LFCs’ internet pages and emails they’ve sent out. The most accurate data comes from the LFCs themselves and this page should be used for estimation purposes only.
New Zealand Fibre Companies
Chorus
We will be implementing a level of change restriction on some parts of our network environment over the 2023 Christmas holiday period. This is being done to minimise the risk of customer impacting events occurring at a time of reduced staffing levels across our organisation and suppliers.
The Chorus holiday restriction period (brown-out) is defined as:
- START: 23:59 Friday 22 December 2023
- END: 06:00 Wednesday 10 January 2024
Network Maintenance & Fault Restoration
- Chorus will continue to provide full fault restoration capability throughout the Christmas holiday period.
- Proactive maintenance will continue on-plan for the most part except for work carried out on equipment inside of Exchange sites and cabinets which will be restricted during the Christmas holiday period.
Co-Location Services (COLO)
- Restrictions will be in place for any build work in COLO areas, including the installation of sub-racks and racks or connection of new equipment to power/network services during the Christmas holiday period.
- There remain no restrictions during the break on Customers accessing their equipment in COLO areas for maintenance purposes.
Chorus Network Build
- All pre-agreed subdivision build work will continue as normal throughout the Christmas holiday period.
- Any build work that creates risk to the existing core and access network elements will be restricted and deferred until after the Christmas holiday period has ended.
Provisioning Activity
- Provisioning activities will continue, although the number of technicians and provisioning staff working through the Christmas holiday period will be reduced in-line with forecasted demand for provisioning work.
Escalations
- Our BAU escalation channels will be available during the holiday period, please ensure your teams have the latest Chorus Escalation Matrix and follow the appropriate escalations process.
Electricity Ashburton
Information not available yet. We’ll update this as soon as we get the information.
Enable Broadband
Enable is applying the work restriction set out below from 18:00 Thursday 21 December 2023 through until 08:00 on Monday 08 January 2024. You are advised to begin planning now to avoid any work being undertaken during this period.
Planned Work Restrictions:
There will be no Network Change activities allowed on the Enable network during the work restriction period. This includes, but is not limited to:
Any Network Deployment and Configuration activities;
Network Operations surveillance equipment changes;
Enable IT network changes;
Central Office power and air conditioning infrastructure changes;
All work in RSP Colo areas, including the installation of sub-racks and racks or connection of new equipment to power/network services. This includes RSPs adding new equipment within existing racks.
All network maintenance activities will be brought forward or deferred until after the work restriction period has ended. It is expected that RSPs will also either expedite or defer maintenance activities on their CoLo equipment.
Enable will continue to provide fault restoration capability throughout the work restriction period.
Customer installation calendars will be closed from 17:00 on Friday 22nd December 2023, opening again at 08:00 on Wednesday 3 January 2024. Automated provisioning activity including access to our ConnectMe self-service appointment portal will continue throughout the work restriction period.
Emergency changes and other exceptions will be considered on a case-by-case basis and approved by the Enable Network Operations Centre – 0800 434 273 option 9.
Lightwire Rural
Lightwire Rural’s 2022/2023 brownout for the Holiday period is from the 25th of December to the 7th of January.
The Lightwire office will be closed on 25 & 26 December and 1 & 2 January.
Operations will continue, although fewer Lightwire Rural staff will be working through the Christmas holiday period.
North Power
Please be advised of the Northpower Fibre Brown-Out for the Christmas – New Year period December 2023 – January 2024.
Provisioning:
We will conclude provisioning orders from 1200hrs Friday 22 December 2023, recommencing at 0900hrs Monday 8 January 2024. The self-service portal and B2B will be available throughout this period for new service orders and MAC requests to be submitted. These requests will be actioned when our staff return on 8 January 2024.
Assure:
During this brown out period our operational and fault teams will have staff on standby to action any incoming operational or fault matters.
Planned Work:
The brown out period for any planned work that could be customer affecting is from 0800hrs 16 December 2023 to 0900hrs 9 January 2024.
Tuatahi First Fibre
Core network restrictions
Our change restriction period will start 5 pm Friday, 15 December 2023 and continue through until 7 am Monday, 8 January 2024:
A partial change restriction will be in place between 5 pm Friday, 15 December 2023 and 5 pm Thursday, 21 December 2023.
A full change restriction will be in place from 5 pm Thursday, 21 December 2023 to 7 am Monday, 8 January 2024
Customer Care hours of operation
From Monday, 25 December 2023 to Tuesday, 2 January 2024, our Customer Care team (previously Service Desk) will be closed for standard provisioning activity. Returning to work Wednesday, 3 January 2024.
Our office spaces will be closed to the public from 12 pm Friday, 22 December 2023 to 8 am Monday, 8 January 2024. There will be limited staff access during this time.
Unison
Information not available yet, but considering Tuatahi’s acquisition of Unison in October, we’re assume that the Embargo period will be similiar to that of Tuatahi First Fibre.
Vector
Vector Office Closedown Days: Last day Friday 22 December with first day back on Monday 8 January.
Vector Fibre Brownout Period: Monday 11 December to Sunday 17 December
Vector Fibre Blackout Period: Monday 18 December to Sunday 7 January
Brownout Definition: Only urgent approved provisioning and project work can be carried out during this period along with fault restoration work.
Blackout Definition: There is to be no work carried out on the network except for fault restoration.
Vital
Vital’s networks and 24/7 Network Operations Centre continue to operate as usual during the holiday Brown Out/Black Out periods.
BROWN OUT – 15 December until 19 December (inclusive)
This work restriction applies to:
- All individual customer connections Exceptions will be managed on a case-by-case basis as approved by Network Operations.
- All network changes Changes – including configuration, software loading and equipment maintenance, will be reviewed to prevent any loss or degradation of service to Vital customers.
- This work restriction will not affect fault and service restoration
BLACK OUT – (Total work restriction) 20 December until 9 January (inclusive)
This work restriction applies to:
- All individual customer connections
- Network changes, configuration, software loading, and equipment maintenance
- This work restriction will not affect fault and service restoration
Vocus NZ / 2 Degrees
Network brown out/black out periods for Christmas 23
2degrees is committed to ensuring our network remains stable and our customers remain connected over the holiday period. To minimise the risk of any issues developing, we will be limiting changes to the network during this period. This is performed in-line with the actions of our LFCs.
Brownout
Friday- 8th December 2023, 18:00 – Wednesday 10th January 2024, 06:00
Friday- 15th December 2023, 00:00 – Wednesday 10th January 2024, 06:00
Blackout
Friday 22nd December 2023, 00:00 – Wednesday 3rd January 2024, 06:00
From 18:00 on 8th December 2023 to 06:00 pm 10th January 2024
High Risk/Impact and Go-live Production deployments will be placed on hold. This is to ensure system stability in preparation for the brownout.
Pre-Production Brownout period. This is required to ensure that Preprod environment is available, and a mirror of Production in case of any Production issue fix testing needed.
From 20th November 2023, All Pre-production changes should have a Production CR deployment schedule planned or Pre-production roll-back date (before the brown-out). This can be noted in the CR description. A consistency report will be run by Change Team by end of November to ensure changes are in/rolled-back before brown-out starts.
From 12:00 on 15th December 2023 to 06:00 on 10th January 2024 (Network Brownout)
A restriction to all planned network build activities with a view to limit change and prevent loss or degradation of service to customers. This work restriction does not affect fault restoration activity and individual customer configuration work.
From 00:00 on 22nd December 2023 to 06:00 on 3rd January 2024 (Network Black-out)
A halt to all network build activities and a full change freeze will be observed. Only fault restoration activities will be allowed during this period.
Agreed Exceptions
This will still follow the change process for appropriate approvals:
Emergency changes as part of incident restoration activities
Operational maintenance activities (Pre-approved restart activities ie ATG, AIA, etc)
Single cell-site activities & COW deployments
Isolated Warehouse Mobile (Kore) and Nova activities that require no changes to 2degrees systems
Christmas promotion rollouts (i.e: handset changes, content portal changes, etc)
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Australian Fibre Companies
The data below has been gathered from the providers’ internet pages and emails they’ve sent out. The most accurate data comes from themselves, and this page should be used for estimation purposes only.
Aussie Broadband / Over the wire
While it’s one of the busiest times of the year, we’d like to share some important info about our Embargo Period during the holiday period.
Key Dates
- Embargo Period – Friday 23 December to Monday 9 January
Embargo Period Close of business Friday 23 December 2022 to Monday 9 January 2023.
Due to supplier and interconnect carrier embargoes, some orders and number ports will be delayed during the Embargo Period. These delays may extend after the Embargo Period while the order backlog is processed by our suppliers.
Aussie Broadband (previously Over the Wire’s) Service Delivery and Support Teams will operate with reduced staff during the Embargo Period to process any active and emergency deployments and resolve any service issues.
We’ll notify you of any potential impacts to your orders and delivery time frames in the lead-up to the Embargo Period.
TPG/AAPT Telecom
The annual network embargo will commence on 21st December 2023 and continues through to 8th January 2024 inclusive.
There are a number of important restrictions imposed by telecommunications service providers generally at this time of the year.
During the Embargo period:
- Orders for standard services will be accepted as usual but delivery times will be extended. Delivery times might also be impacted for services ordered immediately before or after the embargo.
- Provisioning of non-standard services and any network re-configuration activities will not be undertaken.
- Service delivery that requires hardware or software upgrades on the AAPT network will not be undertaken.
We will also be reducing planned network activity to emergency only work, to reduce the risk of outages affecting customers.
Vocus AU
The Vocus embargo period starts from 21st December 2023 (7 p.m.) till 8th January 2024 (8 a.m.)
