Local Fibre Companies (LFCs) will be implementing a level of change restriction on some parts of their network environment over the 2024-25 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.
Make sure you plan any upgrades/builds well in advance to avoid delays.
As a rough estimate, most carriers have their embargo periods between Friday, 20 December 2024 and Monday, 6 January 2025.
See below for more details.
Some LFCs are still to advise us of their work restrictions and we’ll add these once known.
New Zealand
Australia
The data below has been gathered from the LFCs’ internet pages and emails they’ve sent us. The most accurate data comes from the LFCs themselves.
This information should be used for estimation purposes only.
New Zealand Fibre Companies
Chorus
The Chorus holiday restriction period (brown-out) is defined as:
- Start: 23:59 Friday, 20 December 2024
- End: 06:00 Monday, 13 January 2025
Chorus will continue to provide full fault restoration capability throughout the Christmas holiday period.
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.
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.
Chorus are unable to complete exchange-based network modification during this period, all Hyperfibre and HPA orders that require exchange work will require a longer lead time. The advanced scheduling lead-time (currently 20 M-F days) will be extended to account for this brown-out period for all orders placed after the 24th of November. Orders that only require ONT upgrades will proceed as normal.
Escalations
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
Planned Fibre Network Brown-out:
- Start: Tuesday, 3 December 2024
- End: Saturday, 13 January 2025
During this period, planned civil work judged very low to low risk by EA Networks may be allowed. Logical changes will be allowed.
Customers seeking new connections should be advised that EA Networks will only be able to process their connection application from 6th January 2025, and therefore, expectations of time to connect should be judged from that date (not the earlier).
Planned Fibre Network Black-out:
- Start: Thursday, 16 December 2024
- End: Sunday, 5 January 2025 (inclusive)
During this period, there will be no planned civil work, new connections, or network logical activities allowed.
Faults or issues will be addressed as usual during these periods, and every effort will be made to keep any downtime to an absolute minimum.
The first point of contact for faults or issues should be an email to fibrefaults@eanetworks.co.nz. Should this fail to generate a response within 30 minutes, you should contact the Duty Controller on 0800 430 460. They can assist you in escalating the matter to the appropriate personnel.
Contact:
Primary: fibrefaults@eanetworks.co.nz
Secondary: Duty network controller 0800 430 460
Business-as-usual resumes: 06/01/2025
Enable fibre Broadband
Enable is applying the work restriction set out below:
- Start: 17:00 Friday, 20 December 2024
- End: 08:00 on Monday 06 January 2025.
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. Please refer to the Assurance section in the calendar linked below.
- Customer installation calendars will operate at reduced capacity from close of business Saturday, 21 December 2024 until Friday, 3 January 2025. There will be no customer installations on Sunday or statutory days.
- Automated provisioning activity including access to our 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.
Escalations
Any urgent customer provisioning requests for medical or civil emergencies during the planned work restriction period can be submitted to Enable by sending an email to servicedeskescalations@enable.net.nz and utilising the Enable Escalation Matrix.
Lightwire Rural
- Start: Monday, 23 December 2024
- End: Friday, 3 January 2025
Sales & Support Hours
- Support hours: 8:30 am – 7.00 pm
- Sales hours: 8:30 am – 5:00 pm
Northpower Fibre
Provisioning:
We will conclude provisioning orders from 1200hrs Friday, 20 December 2024, recommencing at 0900hrs Monday, 6 January 2025.
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 6 January 2025.
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 14 December 2024 to 0900hrs 7 January 2025.
Tuatahi First Fibre
Core network restrictions
Our change restriction period will start 7.00 am Monday, 16 December 2024 and continue through until 7.00 am Monday, 6 January 2025:
A partial change restriction will be in place between 7.00 am Monday, 16 December 2024 and 5.00 pm Friday, 20 December 2024.
A full change restriction will be in place from 5.00 pm Friday, 20 December 2024 to 7.00 am Monday, 6 January 2025.
During this time:
We will not carry out network construction activity in central offices or on public property.
We will not perform any handover link changes and grooming activity.
All requests for access and works in co-location areas will be reviewed, with a standover enforced if we agree that the proposed works are essential.
We will observe any constraints imposed by local authorities within our network areas between Monday, 16 December 2024 and Monday, 6 January 2025.
Customer Care hours of operation
From Wednesday, 25 December 2024 to Friday, 3 January 2025, Customer Care will be closed for standard provisioning activity. Returning to work Monday, 6 January 2025.*
Our office spaces will be closed to the public from 5.00 pm Friday, 20 December 2024 to 7.00 am Monday, 6 January 2025. There will be limited staff access during this time.*
*This is subject to change
Network Operations Centre hours of operation
Our NOC will remain in operation on the standard 24/7 basis during the entire period for fault monitoring, restoration work and urgent provisioning work.
Vector
Friday, 29th November 2024 17:00 – cut off for MACs needed before Christmas.
Moves, adds and changes (MACs) to existing services requiring action before Christmas brownout should be requested no later than this date.
Monday, 9th December 2024 17:00 – Brownout period
No MACs will be completed from this date until the end of the Blackout period.
Only urgent approved provisioning and project work can be carried out at this time, along with any fault restoration work.
Monday, 16th December 2024 17:00 – Blackout period
A full work restriction on our network commences.
Only critical fault restoration work will continue during this period.
Monday, 6th January 2025 08:00 – all work restrictions end
Vital
Information is unavailable at this time.
Porting Requests (both existing and new) will continue to be processed.
Processing times may be longer than usual, as we will be operating with reduced staff levels during this period (as will other carriers involved in Local Number Porting).
Australian Fibre Companies
The data below has been gathered from the providers’ internet pages and emails they’ve sent us. The most accurate data comes from themselves.
This information should be used for estimation purposes only.
nbn®
Work restrictions will apply from Monday, 16 December 2024 through to Monday, 6 January 2025.
TPG/AAPT
The annual network embargo will commence on 6:00 AM 18th December 2024 and continues through to 6:00 AM 6th January 2025 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 TPG 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.
Voice Porting - Australia
Porting Requests (both existing and new) will continue to be processed.
Processing times may be longer than usual, as we will be operating with reduced staff levels during this period (as will other carriers involved in Local Number Porting).
