4th Utility, gesture of goodwill

From 4th Utility:

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Dear 4th Utility Customer,

We would like to apologise to our customers and thank them for their patience during the internet and VoIP outage experienced at the Barbican Estate.

Our immediate focus was concentrated on replacing centralised equipment and routers in customer homes, working around the clock to get them back online as quickly as possible. We're very pleased to say this work is now complete, aside from customers who are away.

We're sorry and want to offer a good will gesture

As a gesture of good will for the inconvenience this has caused, we are going to credit your account 70% of your monthly rental which will appear as a credit in the next 5-10 working days and will see a reduced payment in your December or January invoice.

Given that we had the new central kit providing service to the estate and a significant proportion of customers back online all within 2 working days of the outage, with CPE available on site for all other customers to take up, we believe the above offer is reasonable and exceeds a simple pro-rata refund of your monthly subscription.

In addition, we will be providing a donation to 'The Barbican Centre Trust' of £2000, on behalf of the Barbican residents.

What happened?

After our acquisition of VFM earlier this year, upgrading the infrastructure at the Barbican Estate was always part of our longer-term improvement programme. Our intention was to bring the equipment into line with our own standard build, which offers improved remote diagnostics, speed of upgrades, and advanced support capabilities, ultimately enabling us to provide a better service for customers.

During a recent scheduled maintenance window at the Barbican Estate, an unexpected hardware failure occurred. The 4th Utility team reacted quickly and had new centralised kit and 1,000 routers onsite within 4 hours of the outage. Staff were also deployed to site quickly to answer customer questions, distribute equipment, and assist with installations.

Could this occur again?

This hardware failure means that the migration on to new equipment in line with our improvement programme has been accelerated for the Barbican Estate. The expedited migration also led to a discovery of further possible site and service enhancements that will now be built into our ongoing development plans.

Now that the new infrastructure is in place, we will be able to offer our customers a better, fully supported service and because the build is more modular, future risks are minimised. As a result of this work, we are confident that any future issues will only have a marginal impact and will be straightforward to manage and resolve quickly. Because of the steps we have taken over the last few days, we do not anticipate the same level of disruption happening again.

If you have any questions or would like any further technical information, please contact us via support@4thu.co.uk and one of our technical or executive team will be happy to respond, over the phone or via email. We know how vital broadband connectivity is for all of our customers, and that's why it's important to us that the quality of our products and services is always high. Thank you again for your patience and for sticking with us.



Copyright © 2021 The 4th Utility | All Rights Reserved

Farewell Vision Fibre Media (VFM)

Here is the farewell email from the Vision Fibre Media (VFM) people:

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Good afternoon Barbican Estate residents,

We wanted to get in touch to let you know that we are handing over all communications regarding your broadband, TV infrastructure and telephone services to 4th Utility today.

4th Utility now have full control of the network and will cover all support queries with their 24-7-365 UK based Customer Care team.

From today we will be closing the support@visionfibremedia.com inbox as all support emails will be dealt with via 4thUtility. Any outstanding tickets logged prior to today are already on the system and will be addressed. Please save support@4thu.co.uk on your email safe list.

What do I do next?

4th Utility have been sending out emails in batches to VFM customers from the email address barbican@4thu.co.uk with a URL / link unique to you showing your account details on their website www.4thutility.co.uk.

Customers need to be migrated from the VFM legacy billing platform on to 4th Utility billing platform, and it needs to be done manually due to GDPR. Once customers click on the link they have been sent in the email, they can check their package is correct and input their payment details.

Billing will not commence until your September invoice so please do not cancel any existing payments as this will be done for you after the last payment in August automatically.

If you have any further questions, not received your link or would like any more information, please do not hesitate to get in touch using the information below.

24/7/365 dedicated support team:
Tel: 0800 102 6223

Email: support@4thu.co.uk
barbican@4thu.co.uk

Kind Regards

VFM Support -> 4th Utility Support

VFM have been taken over by an outfit called 4th Utility.

The contact details for support have changed.  There are reports that the VFM contact numbers / email addresses are already defunct, so use the 4th Utility numbers / email addresses from now on ...

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We have been made aware of some Barbican customers unsuccessfully trying to contact VFM to report problems.

We are happy to help with any queries you may have regarding your broadband, Freesat, Freeview or SKY TV and have set up new dedicated contact methods for Barbican residents.

Please, discard any existing contact information you have and use our new freephone 0800 102 6223 and email address barbican@4thu.co.uk

Please be aware we are currently in a transition phase and do not have full access to the network. In some cases, we are still reliant for support for issue resolutions from the previous provider. We are working towards getting full control as soon as possible, so that Barbican residents can experience an improved service.

It is our intention to maintain current pricing levels, but offer a wider range of broadband service offerings, from which customers can choose to upgrade if they so wish.

VFM Service down on 18th July

From the BEO:

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Power Outage to VFM internet Service

Please be aware that there will be a planned power outage to VFM’s internet service on the 18 July to allow for the installation of a Uninterrupted Power Supply to their system. This battery backed system will prevent losses to the network in future power outages.

... and here is the notice from VFM which I received by email on 2018-07-16:


Dear Customer,

We would like to inform you of necessary improvement works to the Vision Fibre Media network within the Barbican Estate taking place on 18/07/18.

We are introducing technology to our network to ensure better resilience of your services in the event of a power cut within the Estate.

This does mean that there will be a small outage to your broadband and telephony services whilst we carry out the works. Our engineers will be working between 22:00 on 18/07/18 until 04:00 on 19/07/18 with the downtime lasting for no longer than 15 minutes during this window.

Our 24/7 Customer Care team are available for you to speak to should you have any further queries and can be contacted using the details below:

Telephone: 02071128615
Email: support@visionfibremedia.com

Kind Regards
Support
Tel : +44 (0)20 7112 8615

VFM: Network work on 30th Mar at 01:00

VFM are working on their network on 30th March from 01:00 to 03:00:

Click to enlarge

VFM now provide estate TV service support

In a message dated 3rd Aug, the BEO tell us that from 1st Aug VFM (the fibre Internet people) will be providing estate wide support of the TV service ...
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Dear residents

From 1 August VFM (Vision Fibre Media) and not MDTV will be responsible for maintaining the TV signal for the Barbican Estate.

The VFM 24 hour switchboard number is 0207 112 8615 or via email sharon@vfibremedia.com

If in doubt about your TV equipment please contact the Repairs Contact Centre on barbicanrepairs@cityoflondon.gov.uk or 0207 029 3909 first, as if there is no fault with the signal or your equipment is faulty, you will be recharged the cost of a visit by VFM.