COVID-19

5/11/2020 - 11:45 

Lockdown version 2 is here, and we know that times are uncertain again. We just wanted to reach out to all our customers to say that we are still here for you!

Since the first lockdown in spring we have grown our engineering capacity and invested in more vans so that you can rest safe in the knowledge that we are doing everything we can to keep you connected.

The staff at Boundless are working from home now too so we have a personal understanding of the change in circumstances that come from a change in work environments. Now, more than ever we understand the need for a good, stable connection.

With that in mind, we are aware that some of our customers have engineer visits booked for the coming weeks. As it stands, we are still intending for these to go ahead as planned. We are reviewing our policies to suit the new needs and continuing to ensure that our engineers have the correct PPE as we always put the health and safety of both our customers and staff first.

We are expecting an update from the government over the next few days which will be specific to our industry and of course we will continue to update our policies as necessary to remain in line with the latest guidance. If there are any changes that affect you then we will be in touch to let you know.

If you are needing an engineer visit over the coming weeks, we have put together a few questions to keep everyone safe. These will be asked at the point of making a booking:

Has anyone in the premises been diagnosed with COVID-19, been asked to self-isolate, or been travelling to a coronavirus high-risk area or country in the last 14 days?

Is anyone in the premises suffering from flu-like symptoms, cough, difficulty in breathing, fever?

Is anyone currently suffering from a loss of taste and smell?

Are any of the premise’s occupants considered to be at increased risk of severe illness from coronavirus (COVID-19)

As always, if you have any questions for us about any of this – or need our assistance with anything else – please reach out to us via email or phone.

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16/04/2020 - 14:30

The global Covid-19 pandemic has disrupted all walks of life and has in particular, added significantly to the load on all internet traffic around the world. We have seen significantly increased demand throughout the day and night as people are working from home and children and students are stuck indoors and using the internet for more services, more of the time. In general, the Boundless network is coping with this increased demand very well as we have substantial surplus capacity in our global interconnect points and throughout our network. However, a few areas are seeing occasional disruption where local demand outstrips capacity from time to time in certain areas.

Our team continues to work tirelessly to manage the additional demand and keep your service running as smoothly as possible. Despite the Government restrictions on travel and new safe working practices, our engineering, support and customer service teams are all working as normal to keep you online and maintain the best service level possible. We appreciate your continued support and we thank you for bearing with any minor glitches you may experience at these unprecedented times.

From all of our team, we wish you and your household the very best and we remain ready to help or answer your questions.

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27/03/2020 - 16.52

(Loss of taste or smell symptom added 18/05/20) 

In our latest set of measures to protect our work force, operation, service delivery and of course the public. We have stripped back the types of field work Boundless will be carrying out.

As an ISP (internet service provider) we have been identified by the government as key workers, in order to maintain service delivery for all those working from home and the businesses that need to remain operational. We have had great feedback from both key remote workers in the NHS and those responsible for food supply chains to our supermarkets – just to name a few – so we’re proud to know that we’re keeping these people going.

It is therefore vital that we have a healthy workforce to be able to react to essential work as and when it comes in. In aid of this we have made the decision to cancel all scheduled non-essential work, meaning the only jobs that we will be attending going forwards are as follows: 

• Infrastructure repairs where client services are affected
• Client repairs; 
• Service is offline
• Service is affected to the extent that it is rendered useless 

We want to mitigate the exposure to the inside of a customer’s premises as much as possible for our engineers. It may be the case however, that a repair visit requires internal access. In this instance, we have set out procedures for our engineers to follow to create a safe working environment. We would ask that if you do require an engineer visit, that you are forthcoming and answer truthfully to the following questions. This is important to preserve our operational abilities, engineer’s safety and to maintain service delivery:

1. Has anyone in the premises been diagnosed with COVID-19, has been asked to self-isolate, or has been travelling to a coronavirus high-risk area or country in the last 14 days? 
2.  Is anyone in the premises suffering from flu-like symptoms, cough, difficulty in breathing, fever?
3.  Is anyone currently suffering from a loss of taste and smell? 
4.  Are any of the premises occupants considered to be at increased risk of severe illness from coronavirus (COVID-19)? See link for full list.
5.  Finally, just as a reminder, we ask that you apply antibacterial cleaning aids to the area the engineer worked in, post visit. (Our engineers will clean up after themselves, but we ask this to ensure all measures are taken).

We will be maintaining, when relevant, regular communications with our customers to update them on the latest situation. We’d like to reassure you that our management team continue to meet daily to discuss the latest developments and how we will respond to any new challenges.

Should you have any questions, please do feel free to ask.

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19/03/2020 - 14.30

To all Boundless customers,

As you will be aware the required measures and advice from the government with regards to COVID-19 are continually evolving. Our thoughts are with all those whose jobs, businesses and/or health has been impacted.

One of the key pieces of advice has been for employers to encourage home working, helping to stem the rate of infection and alleviate the strain on our fantastic NHS. This means that, as Internet Service Providers (ISPs), our service has become vital in order to keep businesses going and families earning.

We have therefore taken measures in an effort to ensure that our operation continues as normally as possible: 

• Our support is expected to be as normal and our staff will remain available, but we have taken precautions to ensure their well being and safety.
• We will be focusing on essential engineering visits only. Any non-essential bookings will not be provided with a date for the time being, but we will be in contact as soon as we are able to.
• Any customers who are due to have a visit, we ask that you contact us ahead if you or anyone else in your household are showing symptoms so that we can re-arrange the visit for a more suitable time.
• These measures have been taken to ensure that our support team remain on hand to help and that our field engineering team can remain operational; keeping our businesses and families working from home connected.

Our support hours continue to be active (live phone lines) between the hours of 08.30 – 17.00 Monday to Friday and responsive (voicemail call back service) between 17.00 – 20.00 Monday to Friday and 10.00 – 16.00 on weekends. During busy periods, to help with the demand on support, we ask that our customers try to use our troubleshooting advice under the ‘Technical’ section on our FAQ page https://www.boundlessnetworks.co.uk/home-broadband/faqs. Should you struggle to get through on our phone lines and the troubleshooting has not helped to restore service, please log a support ticket via our website (optimised for mobile phone use).

We are expecting that our network will have the capacity to handle the extra demand. Some customers may find that there are periods where additional use in the household will affect the performance of their connection. Should you notice this, please contact our support team to discuss the upgrade options.

We would like to remind everyone that no provider can guarantee 100% up time, so if you are working from home and cannot afford to be offline at all, we would strongly advise you putting into place a backup/alternative. One simple way to do this is to tether your laptop to your mobile phone. It’s very easy to do and worth testing out now whilst you do not have an issue. If the mobile phone coverage over your property is an issue, you should try to arrange alternative and safe places for working.

Finally, we’d just like to thank everyone for their patience during these difficult times and to assure you that the Boundless Management Team are keeping a watchful eye on the news as it unfolds, ready to mould our operation and business to be able to maintain service delivery for our customers.