While summertime is usually a festive season, the start of this year has been marked by devastating bushfires, the tragic loss of life, and heavy impacts to communities across the country.

At Vocus, our thoughts are with those affected, and we’ve been heartened by the response we’ve seen from public and private organisations and individuals alike to support emergency services, impacted people and communities, and to start preparing for the long road to recovery.

At Vocus, we’re lending our support across several areas:

• Our Dodo and iPrimus consumer brands are providing free mobile calls for households with emergency service volunteers for January and February
• We’re supporting our Vocus employees who are emergency services volunteers with paid leave for the duration they are requiredVocus will match donations made by our staff for our bushfire emergency relief fundraising
• If your Vocus service has been directly affected by bushfires in the declared disaster zones and you need support, we’re here to help. Please call us on 1300 88 99 88 or, if you have an account manager, contact them directly.

Our readiness

At Vocus over the last two months, we have escalated our focus on fire readiness and network resilience and continue to actively monitor conditions across all states, including the safety of all our team and contractors. To date, we’ve been able to maintain and restore our network over a sustained period.

In our network operations control centre, we overlay the locations of our assets, the spatial data of our inter-capital network and the locations of our field crew, with a map of real-time threats across the country such as fires, storms, and other potential threats that may impact our operations such as road closures and power outages.

Together with direct communication with emergency services, the Bureau of Meteorology, and other industry providers, this puts us in the best position to monitor the ongoing situation and take the most appropriate steps to maintain our services to you.

Thank you for putting your trust in Vocus for your telco needs and please, take care of yourself and those close to you over the remainder of the summer.