Service Support

Networks need looking after. Ours do it from RADAR.

When a fibre is cut at 2am, you want two things. The first is for someone to know about it before you do. The second is for them to know where it is.

That’s what Total Care is for.

What Total Care covers

The four lines that describe the contract.

Mapping

Detailed mapping and recording of fibre routes and locations.

On-call engineers

To find the location of the fault.

Civils teams

For external investigation and repair.

Reinstatement

Of the service. Service back, route re-fingerprinted, incident closed with a report.

The technical backbone

RADAR is what makes Total Care different.

RADAR™ — our own product — sits in your comms room and watches every fibre in the network every few seconds. It compares the current losses against a fingerprint we took at installation and tells us immediately if there’s an attenuation incident: a fibre bend, a trapped lead, a poorly seated optic, or a break. Because RADAR is linked to a GIS map of the route we built during installation, we know the location of the fault, not just the fact of it. The engineer doesn’t sweep a 2.4km line in the dark. We send them to the chamber.

How RADAR works

What happens when something goes wrong?

Fault causes. Reporting. Action. Repair.

Fault causes

Fibre faults are rare, and can be caused by a trapped patch lead, a bent or damaged cable, rodent damage, or the one everyone thinks about — the digger in the street cutting through the cable. Managed circuits can also have problems with power supplies, routers and switches, and configuration or software issues in the network.

Reporting

Larger and more sensitive fibre networks may be specified with RADAR™. As described elsewhere, this automatically detects a fault and its location. But without RADAR™ it will be your own team that reports a fault to us — which they can do at any time. 24/7.

Action

We immediately begin fault finding, depending on the type of service and the nature of the fault reported. Much of this can be done remotely for faults on managed circuits, but for fibre faults we despatch engineers to site to investigate and repair. We call out the appropriate repair team, depending on whether the fault appears to be indoors or outdoors, and accessible or requiring our civils specialists to uncover the problem.

Repair

The repair might mean cutting out a section of cable and replacing it, or simply re-terminating a fibre in a patch panel. SICOM has been approved by OFCOM and given powers under the Electronic Communications Code — which means we can carry out highway works immediately for emergency repairs to networks, without waiting for local authority permits. Managed circuits can often be repaired remotely, but sometimes need a piece of equipment replaced.

SLA

All our services have comprehensive Service Level Agreements.

Who picks up the phone

No Tier 1 helpdesk between you and the people who installed the network.

The on-call engineers. The civils teams. The mapping team that built the GIS picture in the first place. Not a Tier 1 call handler with no knowledge of your network.

That isn’t a marketing claim — it’s a side-effect of a flat organisational structure. There aren’t many layers, because we designed it that way.

Commercial framing

Free for larger or complex networks.

How it’s priced

Total Care with RADAR™ is included in larger network support agreements. Think data centre networks, or campus and business parks with lots of links terminating in one or two hubs. Smaller links can be Total Care (24/7) or a more cost-effective Standard Care (Mon–Fri, 9–5).

How to think about it

You’ve got a team of specialists, on-call 24/7, with the tools, equipment, spares and skills to rush to your aid — and you might only need them once a year or less. But when you need them, you’ll be glad you had them.

Support conversation

Send us the network details.

Sites, bandwidths, current maintainer. We’ll come back with a Total Care proposal.

Talk to us about Support Read the Ask4 case study

Or download a free guide

0800 861 1440