Essex Telephone Systems partnership with Skyline Networks allow us the privilege of reselling a microwave radio network that offers coverage across SE England. Over this network Skyline delivers premium grade leased line internet connections. As with all leased line services, the delivery is symmetrical i.e download and upload are equal in speed.
Broadband Deliveries
The range of uncontended leased line products available are:
- 100M/100M to 1G/1G in 100M steps
- 5M/5M to 20M/20M in 1M steps
Skyline also offer a contended leased line broadband service, these products are:
- 5M/5M to 20M/20M in 1M steps
- These services are contended at 5:1
Product Features:
a) Leased Lines – By definition these are circuits that connect the client directly to the internet and are for the exclusive use of that client. They are also known as DIA (Direct Internet Access) Circuits
b) Internet speeds are usually measured in millions of bits per second. This is usually abbreviated to Mbps or more simply M. In normal conversation the Mbps or M is pronounced Meg
c) The 1G service is where the G stands for Giga (bits per second). 1G is 1,000 times faster than 1M. In normal conversation the Gbps or G is pronounced Gig
d) Skyline use two radio architectures for service delivery
- Standard radio architecture for service from 5M up to 20M. Contended and un-contended
- Enhanced radio architecture for service of 100M and above
e) We are sometimes asked why we have two radio designs to deliver service over. The complete answer is:
Skyline rates circuit availability at 99.95% and this figure is highly dependent upon the effectiveness of the RF path. The standard 5Ghz radios operating at the maximum power levels within the Ofcom 5GHz license have an effective through-put of around 120Mbps over an optimum RF path, this allows for a full duplex rate of around 60Mbps. This scenario depends upon the radios working to their maximum efficiency and assumes no disruption to the RF path. Should the RF path suffer attenuation, fluctuating Fresnel zones or RF fade then the throughput will drop and service availability will be affected. By a combination of theoretical calculations and empirical testing we have found that a 5GHz RF link that is engineered to an optimum level but with the through-put restricted to 20M allows for a fade margin that will compensate for RF path disruption and allow us to maintain the SLA of 99.95%.
To supply supra 20M circuits (100M and above) we employ licensed links that allow greater power usage, typically in the 13Ghz or 17Ghz frequency bands. As well as increased power utilisation the radio units have more powerful digital signal processing and hence can use significantly more complex QAM constellations. This will allow us to deliver circuits from 100M to 1G in 100M steps and maintain our SLA.
Service Level Agreements (SLA) and Warranty
Skyline offer two service level agreements:
TCAM (Technical Customer Account Management)
- Availability is 24 x 7 x 365
- 4 Hour on-site response time
Standard
- Availability is Monday to Friday – 09.00 to 18.00
- Next working day on-site response time
- Both SLAs are based on a circuit availability of 99.95%
- Both SLAs have a compensation package based on outage times, these are:
- >43 minutes but <4 hours – 10% of monthly fee
- >4 hours but <8 hours – 20% of monthly fee
- >8 hours but <16 hours – 30% of monthly fee
- >16 hours but <32 hours – 70% of monthly fee
- >32 hours – 100% of monthly fee
- Uncontended leased lines come with TCAM SLA FoC
- Contended leased lines come with Standard SLA FoC
- These can be upgraded to TCAM for £50 per month
Warranty
The warranty for the radio hardware continues for the length of the contract. If a unit fails then it is replaced FoC. This warranty excludes damage to the unit by a third party.
Product Features:
a) The usual question we get when talking to prospective clients is “how does bad weather affect the service?” The response is to say that the circuit has a 99.95% availability and, although rain will affect RF performance, we build effective fade margins into the RF Link to compensate for any degradation of signal during periods of extreme weather.
b) Escalation Lists – When a customer has a TCAM SLA it is important to agree an Escalation List. This list contains the contact numbers and agreed times that the customer can be called in the event of Skyline’s NMS picking up a device alarm. See over for NMS details
Support Services
To support the network and client base, Skyline employs the following support structures
- Network Management System (NMS)
- The NMS proactively monitors all devices within the networks, this includes:
- Network Radios
- Network Routers and Switches
- Network Servers
- Network UPS (Back-up batteries)
- Customer Radios
- Should a Network or Customer device develop a fault the NMS will register the alarm and notify Support Engineers via audible and visual alarm
- Dedicated Support Engineers
NMS Alarms
- As noted above the NMS will notify the Support Engineers of any device failure within the Network
- The Support Engineer will raise a Trouble Ticket, contact the customer and begin the fault-finding process. The Trouble Ticket is updated to detail the various steps the Engineer takes to isolate and resolve the problem
- Should the fault-finding process diagnose a faulty unit, or require a visit to the customers site, the Support Engineer will escalate the problem to Scheduling/Field Service
Customer Calls
- Should the customer believe that there is a problem with the internet service they can place a call to the Technical Support Desk.
- The Support Engineer will raise a Trouble Ticket and begin the fault-finding process
- Should a site visit be necessary to assist with the fault-finding process the Support Engineer will escalate to Scheduling/Field Service
If you would like to know more about wireless lease line or wireless broadband services, or any other service we offer, please contact us today and speak with one of our friendly customers assistants.