We understand times are very strange and stressful for many businesses; and in an effort to continue to make communication easy for you and your team, here are some important updates to keep you informed and connected to your clients.
Carrier + Call Centre Status
The ABC reported that a 40% increase in the country’s communications networks are expected due to COVID-19 and the move to remote-work.
This, along with overseas lock-downs, see many of the nation’s carriers being affected:
- Telstra and Optus have had to close many of their Philippines based call centres, and will be hiring an additional 1000 locally-based temporary contractors.
- A number of mobile-only carriers are reporting customer service delays across their support team due to entire department shut downs.
- Some carriers have gone to extraordinary lengths like hiring hotels and airBnBs to keep their teams operating.
- Global carriers and conferencing companies such as RingCentral and Zoom have also faced network outages due to congestion and demand.
So if you have queries for a carrier, we strongly recommend contacting them via email or live chat, as reports are that this is currently the fastest way to get support.
Also, this sudden increased demand on the national networks “is potentially a big stress on the communications system” and given Australia’s move to an IP based communications network (no longer PSTN/ISDN copper phone lines) intermittent outages and the like are a real possibility.
In fact, we’ve seen challenges and outages across almost EVERY carrier at some point this week already. (Tools such as http://AussieOutages.com can be helpful here.)
NBN Network & Managed Disconnects
The NBN is reported to be 94% through it’s roll out, however the government & NBNco have decided to put a hold on the managed disconnection of the remaining old copper phone lines for both business premises and homes. This is a great relief to all, and no doubt will help minimise disruptions over the coming months.
The NBN has also announced they have added an extra 40% capacity to it’s network to assist with the increased demand for bandwidth through this time. (This is not an increase in speeds, but an increase in the amount of data per second that can go through the network across this country.)
Provisioning & New Order(s)
As an extension of the call centres and staff upheaval across the entire national communications network mentioned above, new orders for a range of products and services may be delayed.
It also appears, Telstra have just announced they will be halting all Local Number porting operations for the foreseeable future. This means customers will be unable to port services in, and in-turn they will be unable to port services away through this period.
Telstra has also advised that all Cat C ports that are booked will be cancelled. Any Cat A ports that are in progress will continue, however, there will be no support for these cutovers if they fail completion.
So please be aware that if you have orders anywhere in the network with a carrier, you may find porting dates, install timelines and scheduled visits are all fluid and being continually rescheduled (or cancelled) across all carriers.
Infiniti Service + Support Team
Our internal technical support teams are still fully operational to help you and your company.
We are obviously following government advice and available for onsite visits (following smart health practices) for all businesses that remain open … or remote programming is also available on many phone systems.
If you have any questions regarding your phone system, remote/home working, or company communications, please reach out to us on 1800 850 214.
Work From Home Support & Setup
We’ve had a lot of enquires above home and remote working and phone systems the last few days. So just to reiterate our service + support team are working, and are able to help set you and your business up with everything needed to work from home or other remote locations. Most phone systems have softphone apps or other easy ways to connect to your phone system from where ever you are.
So if you have any questions at all about this, please reach out to David, Matt & the rest of our support team who will be able to help on 1800 850 214.
Every business and everyone is under immense pressure during this time (no matter how big or small), so please be patient with one another, understand everyone is doing their best to support each other, and we will continue to communicate with you as best we can and provide accurate updates where possible.
Regards,
The entire Infiniti Telecommunications team.
