Service Level Agreement

This Service Level Agreement should be read in accordance with your Order Confirmation and our Terms and Conditions, together forming This Agreement.

DEFINITIONS

Business Day
Any day other than a Saturday, Sunday or recognised public holiday in England.

Contracted Resolution Time
The contracted resolution time is the maximum number of hours elapsed from between the time an engineer is at the applicable site where the Fault has been located until the Fault has been repaired (whether with a temporary fix or a permanent fix), in our and your reasonable opinion, less any time relating to an Excused Outage.

Emergency Maintenance
Any maintenance, other than Scheduled Maintenance carried out by us or our suppliers, as set out in this Service Level Agreement.

Excused Outage
Any outage, unavailability, delay or other degradation of Service related to, associated with or caused by emergency maintenance, scheduled maintenance, your actions or inactions, power or equipment provided by you or a Force Majeure event (as defined in clause 17 of the Terms), all of which are more detailed below in this Service Level Agreement.

Fault
A failure for the Service to materially comply with the terms of this Service Level Agreement and Terms and where such Service is unavailable to operate.

Off-Net Traffic
Traffic that commences from or terminates to any location which is not on our network.

On-Net Traffic
Traffic that commences from and terminates to a location which is on our network.

Packet Delivery
Has the meaning given to it in this Service Level Agreement.

Scheduled Maintenance
Any scheduled maintenance carried out by us or our suppliers, as more detailed in this Service Level Agreement.

Service Credit
A credit issued to you as set out in this Service Level Agreement where we miss a Service Level.

SLA
Minimum levels of Service agreed within this Service Level Agreement

MAINTENANCE

We may upon five (5) days’ notice or, in an emergency (as determined by us) with as much notice as is reasonably practical in the circumstances, if any at all, perform Scheduled or Emergency Maintenance (including temporary suspension of Service where we consider this necessary) to maintain or modify our network, or the Services and/or to prevent or Emergency Maintenance or preventative maintenance, will not be counted as unavailability for purposes of any Service Level but shall be deemed an Excused Outage.

MAINTENANCE WINDOW

The maintenance window for Scheduled Maintenance is on Monday to Friday (inclusive) each week. Where maintenance will result in degradation of Service, we shall use our reasonable endeavours to conduct such maintenance between 09:00-17:00 hours (UK time) unless we or our suppliers require to carry out such Scheduled Maintenance outside of these hours.

Scheduled Maintenance: It may be necessary from time to time for us to schedule downtime for software updates or network enhancements. We will use reasonable endeavours to give you at least a minimum of ten (10) days’ advance notice of such events, and to schedule such events to cause minimum impact to you.

Emergency Maintenance: It may be necessary from time to time for us to carry out Emergency Maintenance to the network in order to maintain appropriate levels of Service quality, to resolve Faults, or where there is a risk to the operation of the Service. For such events, you acknowledge and agree that it may not be practical for us to provide you with advanced notification.

Change Freeze: Each year, we may announce dates of any change freezes. A change freeze is to allow for reduced engineering staff across our company and those that support us. The direct effect is that orders for new that period. This does not include Scheduled or Emergency Maintenance.

Support services continue during this period along with any necessary triage work, although workarounds will be employed rather than any changes to core infrastructure as much as possible.

SERVICE LEVEL COMMITMENTS

Services are subject to the following Service Levels. In the event we do not achieve a particular Service Level in a particular period, we will issue a Service Credit to you as set forth below upon your request. To request a Service Credit, you must contact our customer service team at 0330 053 5533 or yourbill@associated-telecom.com within five (5) days of the end of the period for which a Service Credit is requested.

AGGREGATE SERVICE CREDIT CAP

Notwithstanding any other term of this Service Level Agreement or the Terms, in no event shall the total amount of Service Credits issued you in any month exceed one hundred percent (100%) of the recurring monthly charges payable by you in respect of the Service in that month.

AVAILABILITY

Availability shall be measured and calculated using our standard processes, tools and methodologies in effect from time to time, as determined by us. If a Fault or series of Faults in a period of unavailability or downtime which has a common cause in a twenty-four (24) hour period, such Fault or services of Faults shall be counted as one Fault.

EXCUSED OUTAGE

We shall not be liable to pay Service Credits, where such failure is due to any of the following which each and all shall be an Excused Outage:

• A Force Majeure event;
• Scheduled or Emergency Maintenance;
• Any Service-affecting fault that is not classified by us as a loss of Service;
• Failure because you have not provided suitable customer premise equipment or configuration to take advantage of a backup circuit that forms part of the Service availability;
• Actions or inactions of the you and/or landlord of the building;
• Works carried out by anyone other than us;
• Failure by the you to provide prompt assistance and information including first line checks, as requested by us;
• Any network incident that is raised by you which is subject to inaccurate or incomplete information;
• Failure by you to respond to an enquiry from us or any third party acting on our behalf which delays, hinders or prevents us from performing our obligations;
• Faults, delays, and failures by us to meet any Service Levels which are caused by denial-of-service attacks;
• Where the Fault is proven to be caused by the you; and/or the landlord of the building;
• Faults which are associated with physical cable breaks or vandalism within the network. Estimated restoration of Service will be communicated to the you via our helpdesk;
• Any problems caused by. Openreach infrastructure, power disruption or environmental conditions at the Site, your router and/or associated cabling and/or any other hardware, software, materials, or services not provided by us;
• A misconfiguration or omission of a requested bolt-on configuration element; and
• Any failure of your premise equipment, such as routers, firewall hardware (but not any of our equipment). For the avoidance of doubt, this does not form part of the Service availability target and no Service Credits are paid against these. We endeavour to issue replacement hardware on the next Business Day after the Fault arising.

INTERNET AVAILABILITY SLA

SERVICE COMPLAINTS

Whilst we take every step to ensure that our Services are delivered in accordance with This Agreement and within the agreed timescales, we understand that there may be instances when a more formal process is required. Our complaints procedure can be obtained from www.associated-telecom.com/complaints-procedure. This document outlines the process of how to make a complaint and the timelines you can expect the complaint will to be dealt with.

SERVICE DESK HOURS

We operate a service desk during business hours of 8.30am-5.30pm on Business Days.