As we are all aware, many countries have declared national emergencies due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Telecom26 would like to take the opportunity to provide an update and reassurance to all of our customers about our services and operational plans during this unprecedented time.
With immediate effect, we are implementing the COVID-19 augmented business continuity measures recommended by the World Health Organisation and Federal Office of Public Health in Switzerland to ensure our employee, partner, and customer safety, while retaining the highest level of quality and uninterrupted service for our global customers.
In compliance with the recommended guidelines, Telecom26 will be implementing social distancing protocols in order to help reduce the spread of the virus. We have instructed that all our non-business critical personnel to work from home in order to help limit the spread of COVID-19. We have made provisions to ensure that our employees have secure access to all required operational systems, in-line with our global corporate practices and policies.
In addition, all employee travel, offsite meetings and attendance of any organised events has been suspended until further notice. In order to facilitate a more personal and social work environment, we will be integrating work collaboration platforms and video conferencing into our daily routines to be used with customers and employees alike. Throughout this period of remote operation, our offices will remain open for all essential personnel to work on site and will continue normal operating office hours.
Given Telecom26’s leadership in global healthcare connectivity and in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, we have outlined an action plan to help our customers combat this global health crisis. With effect from March 16th and for the next 90 days, any new or existing customers that require connectivity services for purposes specifically related to COVID-19 eHealth activities, we will provide the following in order to help enable connectivity and onboard new diagnostic equipment rapidly as they become available:
- Availability of thousands of pre-provisioned GlobalSIMs with subsidised crisis usage rates, ready to be distributed globally and integrated into any device
- Subsidised all-in-one solution with full end-to-end data connectivity that includes the ability to interconnect multiple devices to a single Telecom26 enabled router, providing SD-WAN capability with fully resilient subscription and device management capabilities
- Removal of any activation or onboarding fees associated with establishing a new service account
- Easement of any usage restrictions such as usage caps
- Extended data expiration periods for all term-based accounts
- Additional global support resources capable of addressing customer enquiries on a 24/7/365 basis
Our focus as a cross-border mobile operator remains the same as any other day: we are committed to ensuring that our customers have access to a global network of business-critical connectivity. We would like to assure our customers that all of our global operations are fully up and running.
In addition, we are working with our partners to ensure proper support is available from all of our interconnection partners in the event that any issues arise. Since the outbreak of the virus, we have been globally monitoring network performance and we have not seen any significant increase in data consumption or partner network related outages.
As a provider of critical communications connectivity, the ability to respond to these types of situations is mortared within our foundation. Our networks have been designed with geo-redundancy and resilience in mind, with multiple data centres and over 30 points of global presence. Our network is prepared and is capable of rapid expansion, if and when needed. Through our mobile operator partnerships, we have established the ability to connect to multiple operators within a country, removing any dependence on a single operator, further reducing any performance issues that may emerge within any given country of operation.
As we migrate our workforce to a distributed, work from home environment, we at Telecom26 pledge to continue to provide our customers and partners the highest quality of global connectivity access to business-critical systems and support services. We realise that this is a challenging and stressful time for everyone, in a rapidly changing environment. We further understand that our network is critical to supporting our customers’ global efforts in order to understand and mitigate the outbreaks of this and similar health crises. As a result, we are committed to assuring our customers that we will continue to deliver when you need us the most.
