THE NOC.
Preventing outages with quick thinking.
When we say our NOC operates 24/7, we really mean it. The team in our Network Operations Centre monitor our networks day and night to catch issues as soon as they happen. Every day, they work with teams throughout Vital to respond to issues and deliver fixes for our customers.
Storms stiring up trouble.
At 3am on a stormy morning last July, our NOC noticed trouble at one of our radio sites. Strong winds had knocked a dish at one of our Southland sites out of alignment.
It was important for the link to stay up to keep full coverage in the area, so the NOC launched into action. The team alerted our Southland Field Engineer and kept a close eye on the site overnight. Thanks to the NOC’s watchful eye and a lucky change in wind direction, the link managed to hold on until our Field Engineer could get on-site to secure the dish.
With a solid temporary fix in place, there was no reduction in coverage for customers while the team waited for better weather and a new dish to roll out the permanent repair.
keeping customers online during repairs.
At the end of 2022, our teams set out to replace the dish. The weather was looking good and all the parts had arrived, there was just one problem. To install the new 1.6-meter dish, the main link in the area would need to be taken offline.
Reducing coverage in the area for a whole day would impact customers – something we wanted to avoid. So, the team took a closer look at some hardware facing an alternative site that had been turned off due to its age. Amazingly, the older equipment was still operational!
Teams across Vital banded together to get this newly discovered back-up link ready for the big change over. Engineering set up the configuration, our local Field Technician was on-site, and our NOC was standing by to switch the paths. At 10am on repair day the NOC turned on the alternate path, and at 10:30, they turned off the main link. Some quick test calls confirmed that everything was up and running. Traffic was going through the new back-up link and radio coverage was loud and clear.
The techs replacing the dish worked fast and had the repaired dish online by early afternoon. Thanks to the 24/7 monitoring in the NOC and some great teamwork an outage was avoided, the site is as good as new, and there’s a new backup link ready to go – just in case.