This agreement applies to services delivered by the Providers as part of the GEN3 service. The GEN3 service is a complete Internet access service for public higher education and research institutions and associated entities in South Africa, and is also a National Research and Education Network service for these institutions, interconnecting them and connecting them to the global research network.

These institutions and entities are fundamentally and critically dependent upon stable, reliable and high-quality Internet services, and the three parties to this agreement, recognising this dependence, commit to the delivery of such a service and to continuous improvement of the quality of the service.

2. Scope of agreement

This agreement applies to those service elements that are provided by the two Providers. The nature of these service elements is more fully set out in the attached Service Description Schedules. In simplified terms, the service elements are:

A Customer Edge (“CE”) router, managed and maintained by Internet Solutions. This is the point of connection between the Customer’s network and the GEN3 network;

A physical access circuit and MPLS transport between each site and one of two gateways, as well as with each other site, provided and maintained by Neotel;

A National Internet Access service, provided by Internet Solutions;

International circuits, provided and maintained by Internet Solutions;

and gateway services in London, including International Internet Access, load balancing, peering and transit arrangements, connectivity to other National Research and Education Networks, and bandwidth allocation, maintained by TENET.

3. Term of agreement

This agreement takes effect on 12 February 2008 and ends on 31 March 2010. The parties to the agreement undertake to review annually those provisions that are not determined by contractual agreement.


4. Service hours

The services will be available at all times (“24/7/365”) except when subject to scheduled maintenance. The Providers may withdraw the services for maintenance between the hours of 00h01 and 06h00 on any Sunday. The Providers will give TENET four days’ advance notice of planned maintenance. 

The Providers commit to the following levels of service element availability:

Services provided by Internet Solutions:

6. Response times (“RTT”)

The Providers commit to the following network RTT averages: 

Services provided by Neotel:             150 ms

Services provided by Internet Solutions:

National services:       35 ms (services provided out of Rosebank)

                                                            50 ms (services provided out of Cape Town)

7. Packet loss

The providers commit to confining packet loss to the following levels:

Services provided by Internet Solutions:

8. Service desk

A single service desk for all fault and incident reporting will be maintained by Internet Solutions and will accept customer reports, irrespective of the service elements that are faulty. The service desk will be operational at all times (“24/7/365”).

The service desk number is 021 415 7196.

The Customers undertake to provide TENET with names and contact details of staff competent to lodge fault reports. This information will also be used by the Service Desk for call logging and customer feedback.

Service requests that are not operational should be directed to the TENET Service Manager. See point 12 for contact details.

9. Incident response times

Internet Solutions will respond to support calls within 30 minutes of their receipt at the Service Desk.

If the support call requires on-site attendance for any Customer Edge Router hardware problems then Internet Solutions will respond on site within two hours during business hours and within four hours outside business hours. If the Customer site is more than 100 km from the nearest Internet Solutions service centre then the minimum on-site response time will be increased by 90 minutes for each 100 km (or part thereof) that the site is distant in excess of 100 km. 

Neotel will respond to support calls within 40 minutes of their receipt at the Service Operations Centre (SOC). (Customers should note that they do not need to log calls with the SOC – all incident reports that require Neotel attention will be relayed to the SOC by the IS Rapid Response Desk.)

Neotel commit to the following Mean Time to Restore levels:

Severity 1 faults (defined as a critical outage where the link is down): 4 hours, with first response 40 minutes after fault logging.

Severity 2 faults (defined as faults or outage causing degradation of performance such as packet loss; latency or jitter that is greater than the guaranteed standards): 8 hours, with first response 60 minutes after fault logging.

If the support call requires on-site attendance then Neotel will respond on site within four hours during business hours and within eight hours outside business hours. If the Customer site is more than 100 km from the nearest Neotel service centre then the minimum on-site response time will be increased by 90 minutes for each 100 km (or part thereof) that the site is distant in excess of 100 km.

Incidents are automatically escalated by the Providers where necessary according to criteria designed to protect service availability (see points 5 to 7 above). Requests for manual escalation should be directed to the TENET Service Manager. See point 12 for contact details.

11. Reporting and review

The Providers will monitor the availability and performance of the services and report each month to TENET on service achievements. Reporting will focus upon recorded availability, upon the analysis of any availability failures, and upon any actions necessary to improve service delivery. The parties undertake to conduct reporting and review meetings with a view to continuous improvement of the service that is delivered to the customers. Service review meetings will be attended at minimum by the service managers of each signatory and by any other parties necessary to conduct the business of the meeting, including customer representatives where necessary.

12. Contact information

Enquiries about this agreement should be directed to:

TENET Service Manager

email dbg at tenet.ac.za