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COVID-19: ‘Flicking to remote’ is no simple task

Police care with LED sign reading Stay Home, Stay Safe

Essential services rely on Telestar to switch quickly to remote operations mode

As the COVID-19 pandemic spread in February 2020, essential services and critical industries across Australia and New Zealand had to change the way they operated in just a few days.

For many of even the best prepared organisations, this was a change for which there was no precedent.

A Justice Department, running a court system with all jury trails suspended, a state prison system with all visits suspended, and a Sheriff’s office with all buildings in isolation, had to somehow keep functioning while observing social distancing rules.

An ambulance service serving over seven million people suddenly had to rely on distance employees rather than a traditional central command.

Construction companies working on critical projects had to keep going, but in a working model that had never been done before, relying heavily on mobile communications.

With offices and bases closed or restricted, continued operations depended on getting new mobile connections and devices directly connected and in the hands of key staff in their homes or remote locations in just hours or days.

Telestar stood up a 24/7 virtual team for the COVID-19 emergency within the first day of the new rules, actioning requests for up to multiple thousands of new connections at a time.

Telestar’s staging, kitting and logistics group shipped fully configured SIMs and devices with personalised delivery to the homes of work-from-home employees. Each employee was called directly first to check shipping addresses, so that nothing would slow down the deliveries.

Communications needs were quite different to normal times, so Telestar deployed a set of quick bundles to make ordering easier, with special focus on Work From Home tools like dongles, Cradlepoints and Nighthawks, all delivered for immediate setup and use.

Nothing was allowed to slow down connections and deliveries, so Telestar used its backorder monitoring capability to immediately suggest alternate equipment where requested items involved a wait time.

While ‘flicking to remote’ was the urgent priority, it was also important to essential agencies to maintain business controls. Telestar was able to help here too, with a special Data Buffer analysis service to monitor a mobile fleet’s holistic usage and avoid data blowouts.

“Telestar was honoured to be able to help many essential services and critical industries ‘flick to remote’ so quickly” said Julie Atwal, Telestar CEO. “Telestar supports dozens of government agencies and major industries across Australia and New Zealand to ensure their staff have the communications they need when they need them to stay productive.”

About Telestar

Telestar manages the communications of businesses and governments. Telestar’s solutions procure, secure, assist, control and govern over 500,000 devices and connections for large organisations across Australia and New Zealand. Large enterprises and government agencies trust Telestar to manage all aspects of their communications assets, usage and expenditure, to simplify their operations, improve service and contain cost. www.telestar.com.au

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