What is Planned Works ?

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What is Planned Works

Overview of Planned works / Change management operations

Colt network spans 184,000+ kilometres of long distance, metro fibre, subsea and terrestrial leased capacity across 28 countries. This makes the management of planned works across such a complex network imperative to be precise, controlled and of highest success rate.

All maintenances (normal/emergency) conducted by Colt are reviewed and authorised by:

  • Change management: To ensure that the change conforms to customer as well as Colt standards.
  • Business Advisors: To evaluate from customers’ perspective and apply customer sensitivities, if any.
  • Technical Assurance (Level 3): To ensure that the method of procedure, implementation, testing and rollback plan/steps are appropriate for the submitted change.

Maintenances by our 3rd party providers (OLOs) are reviewed and authorised at change management level only to communicate the event at the earliest possible opportunity to our affected customers.

Planned work categories

On the basis of impact, changes/planned works are termed, categorised and communicated as:

  • SA (Service Affecting) Change: A change which shall affect the services of Colt’s external customers is termed as SA.
    1. Normal: A normal change is one which is planned well in advance and is subjected to the normal change procedures of assessment, authorization, approval and scheduling before implementation.

Lead time: 10 calendar days or more.

  1. Emergency: Emergency changes are required to repair a service which is impacting or may in the near future impact the business to a high degree; where the change which must be introduced as soon as possible in order, for example, to resolve a major incident or prevent a major incident occurring, in the near future, or to resolve a business/customer critical requirement. In rare cases shorter time-line requested may also be due to reasons like – involvement of Civil/regulatory agencies, customer agreement, or 3rd party/ vendor dependencies/ constraints. Please note – Colt shall always provide clear justification when informing about an emergency planned maintenance.

 

Lead Time: Depending on risk but generally speaking less than 10 calendar days.

(Note: Short notice maintenances by our Other licensed operators (OLO)–Whilst Colt endeavours to provide minimum 10 calendar days’ notice to its customers; other operators are not always able to provide the same to Colt. Colt makes best effort to reduce hand-off and notify the affected customers with minimum delay. The email notification looks the same as a standard Colt maintenance notification, but the distinction is made in the Subject of the maintenance notification and instead of stating Colt maintenance, it states Third party maintenance work. )

  • NSA (Non-service Affecting) Change: A change in which the services of any external customer is not planned be disrupted, is termed as NSA change. This includes switch hits of less than 50 milliseconds. No email notifications are issued to customers for NSA Changes (Colt or OLO).

Maintenance Windows

The majority of maintenances (normal, emergency or non-service affecting) are conducted outside normal office hours. This means from 18:00 GMT up to 06:00 GMT during the week, and weekends anytime, and for services contracted with Colt Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong and South Korea, from 18:00 JST up to 06:00 JST (Japan Standard Time) during the week, and weekends anytime.  Where we are dependent on law of the land (regulatory), external site access or 3rd party assistance, the maintenance window is subject to the dependency involved and may vary from the standard window as stated above.

Email Notifications

Colt is bound to send advance email notifications to affected customers. Email notifications are sent from PlannedWorks@colt.net, and for services contracted with Colt Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong and South Korea from Asia-maintenance@colt.net. The notification contains necessary details about the planned work in terms of – the maintenance date and time window (in GMT), customer circuit details, and justification for the works being performed. Notifications are always communicated in English.

In order to ensure that the notifications reach the correct parties, we request that you send us an email, reply on a notification received, or raise a ticket in Colt online, within the planned works module, with any changes that need to be implemented. Contacts are linked to your Customer number (OCN) only, thus it will prove helpful if the relevant OCN is provided in the request.  One OCN can be associated with multiple contacts for planned work notification purposes.

Enquiries

For an enquiry about an announced maintenance, we urge our customers to reply on the notification received as this generally contains all the information about the work in question.  Alternatively contact PlannedWorks@colt.net, or for services contracted with Colt Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong and South Korea contact Asia-maintenance@colt.net, providing the maintenance reference.  A ticket can also be raised in Colt onlinewithin the planned works module. The preferred method of communication for planned work enquiries is email. A ticket will be opened and any concern or enquiry will be addressed during office hours, Monday to Friday from 08:00 CEST to 17:50 CEST, and for services contracted with Colt Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong and South Korea from 08:00 JST to 17:00 JST.

Planned Work Status

The status of planned works driven by Colt, shall be communicated post the successful completion of the activity.  We endeavour to communicate this as soon as possible, but as this is not business critical, it can take up to 48 hours.  In case the status of a planned work is required immediately after the completion of the activity, or if any issues are present post the completion time quoted in the notification, please get in touch with our 24/7 Technical helpdesk for the respective countries and quote the planned works reference mentioned in the subject.

Note: OLO’s generally do not send an update on completion of planned maintenances by them. If the status of a maintenance is required, it can be requested by mailing PlannedWorks@colt.net,or Asia-maintenance@colt.net for services contracted with Colt Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong and South Korea. For practical reasons, should an OLO not communicate a reschedule or a cancellation of a maintenance, we accept the maintenance as successfully completed as advised previously by the majority of our carriers.