Our customer, a major telecom operator, was in danger of losing a significant section of a large city exchange over New Year’s Eve; one of the busiest times of the year for using mobile and fixed line voice services.
The main timing source within the building had suffered a single clock failure and had reverted to its standby clock. Due to the contractual Service Level Agreement (SLA), and the Bank Holiday, this event occurred two days before the situation could normally be raised with the Chronos support team. During this time, most of the exchange was running from a single clock, however, since most Synchronisation Supply Units (SSUs) are configured with redundant clock and output cards, service was not lost. The likelihood of two failures occurring during the time to replace the faulty unit is extremely rare. The Chronos engineer analysed the fault and arranged to visit site the next working day to replace the faulty equipment for what should be a routine fix.
Site visit outside contractual hours
However, the improbable happened. Just as most people were venturing out to begin their New Year celebrations, the active standby module failed. Even though the contractual obligation was next working day and as it was New Year’s Eve, that would have meant a two-day delay to restore service on the busiest night of the year. The engineer gauged the potential level of risk to the network and the impact this might have on such an important night to our customer and immediately arranged for site access to allow a site visit within four hours. En route he was able to supply two workarounds by phone to resolve the issue on an interim basis until he was able to reach site and restore full operation with 1:1 redundant clock cards just after midnight on New Year’s Day.
Chronos maintains its 24/7 support service 365 days a year and undertakes significant faults/repairs. Site visits are completed on time and before failures can cause major issues to networks.
Keep your networks operational and generating revenue with Chronos 24/7 support services. To discuss a 24/7 upgrade or support options, please contact our team.
