Dear Customer,

As a result of Government restrictions across the UK and globally to prevent the spread of the COVID-19 virus, many of our suppliers are finding their operational activities severely impacted.

To keep our customers informed of how this affects our ability to provide products and services to you, we have put together a summarised update below.

We will provide updates as and when any items change.

Note that Orbex has successfully implemented our Business Continuity plans and now have 95% of staff working from home. As a result, our provisioning, support and billing teams are currently fully operational.

If you have any queries, please don’t hesitate to contact your Account Manager.

Yours sincerely,
Boris Gajic
Operations Director, Orbex Solutions

Below is a communication sent to the industry by Openreach yesterday (24.3.2020).

What does this mean for delivery of Orbex products and services?

Ethernet Services

Orbex provide Ethernet services delivered from a number of carriers. At this moment in time, all carriers who utilise Openreach engineering for delivering their services will be affected by the Openreach MBORC declaration. The list of providers includes:

• Openreach
• TalkTalk Business
• BT Wholesale
• Vodafone

As per the MBORC declaration, priority will be given to the customer types listed above subject to resource availability.

At this moment in time Virgin Business are reporting services and repair is in place for 'On Net' services but business processes now include the advice given by the government on COVID-19 and the safety of their engineers.

We are actively chasing formal updates from COLT, CityFibre and SSE.

Broadband Services

As many of our Broadband services rely on the WLR service delivered by Openreach, provision and repair services will be affected by the Openreach MBORC declaration.

Cloud PBX Provisioning and Hardware/Accessories

At present, the provisioning portals are fully operational and are available for new orders. Any orders that require number porting should be mindful of the current porting service restrictions in place across the industry (see porting section in this communication).

Our supply chain is still able to dispatch hardware, and we will be monitoring the availability of postal and courier services closely.

We are currently experiencing high levels of demand for both IP phones and accessories. As a result, with immediate effect, we will be limiting the number of Power Supply Units (PSU) to 5 per complete order. At present, there is a good stock levels of all IP phones and headsets, however, we do need to advise that delivery may be delayed at this exceptionally busy time.

Mobile

O2 Migrations

We have been advised that there is an issue at O2 affecting the whole industry, that may prevent or delay migrations on their network. This is due to network support centres, who oversee these changes, being based in India where staff are affected by a lockdown in place due to the COVID-19 risk. We do not have any specific information around when the issue might be fixed at this stage, but it will be worth delaying any migrations and managing customer expectations wherever possible until a further update can be provided.

O2 SIM Shortage

We have recently seen an increased demand for stock of O2 SIM cards. We currently have limited stock and are not expecting any further deliveries of additional O2 SIMS until 12^th April.

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