Managed IT

The quietest fortnight of the year is the best time to fix things

Every business has a list of IT jobs that need a quiet office and never get one. School holidays are that window.

Comstel ICT · Managed IT · September 2026

NSW school holidays run Monday 28 September to Friday 9 October. Other states vary by a week either side. For most Australian businesses that means a fortnight of thinner desks, fewer meetings and lower call volumes.

Disruption costs less when there’s less to disrupt.

A phone system cutover on a busy Tuesday means missed calls and irritated staff. The same cutover during school holidays is barely noticed. It’s identical work — the difference is what it costs you while it happens.

What’s worth doing in a quiet fortnight

1. Phone system migrationNumber porting runs in parallel with your existing service, so there’s no window where calls go nowhere. Training lands far better when the office isn’t flat out. Most sites go live in three to seven business days.
2. Internet upgrade or failover installRequires a technician on site and a brief interruption to the line. Much easier to schedule when fewer people need it working every minute.
3. Rolling out security properlyDeploying endpoint protection and switching on multi-factor authentication means touching every device and a certain amount of staff hand-holding. Both are easier with fewer staff in.
4. The print fleet nobody has auditedWorking out what you actually print, what it costs and where devices should sit requires someone walking the floor without getting in anybody’s way.
5. Cabling and comms room tidy-upThe job that always gets deferred because it means a rack being open and cables unplugged during business hours.

What isn’t worth doing

Anything that needs the whole team present to test properly. If half your staff are away, a change that depends on everyone confirming it works will simply generate a second round of problems in October.

Where to start

With what it would cost. A free business audit maps what you’re running now, what it’s costing you, and what would actually improve if you changed it. Half an hour, and it covers phones, internet, mobile, security, IT and print.

Then you decide what fits the fortnight and what waits until next year — and we’ll say plainly which is which.