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Update. All sorted upgrade from FTTC to FTTP in 14 days ( not including industrial action ) cost of £1.49 a month extra to go from 14m to 150m . Well done BT. All local external fibre build done in a little over 3 months in a rural area mostly overhead. Only altnet in the area are still not ready after over a year of building. And VM/O2 still over 20 miles away with no new build outside of the 3 existing historic locations within that radius!!!!!!!
A few months ago I posted about Trooli and Openreach building FTTP in my rural area. At that time Trooli had been building in the area for about a year and OR were just starting. Well tonight I received an email from OR advising that FTTP was now go in our area and taking orders for conversion. Looked on Trooli website and guess what, yup still no service available at my post code. Guess what I will be doing tomorrow…
I have to agree, there is a mood change in the last week or so. The rail unions will be in talks next week, the barristers have come to an agreement with the ministry of justice, ambulance workers and other NHS staff are awaiting ballots . Perhaps now people like Grant Shapps who was not prepared to get involved in trying to resolve the rail strikes is out of that job people are prepared to enter into talks. That’s not to say any talks in any sector will initially get agreement, at least they are now making an effort, I suspect the government has realised that not trying to assist in a resolution in the past has simply made things worse and perhaps been in contact with all parties to say, make another effort we need the whole country to pull in the same direction for a change…
“ Openreach broadband base down 89k in Q2 (Q2 FY22: net adds of 29k) due to reduced broadband market growth and c.40k impact from industrial action, with competitor churn in line with our expectations; “
I read that as a loss of 39k BB connections as the other 40k are connections in the system that are yet to be completed due to industrial action. It is likely that many of the lost connections have gone to Altnets in rural areas that BT has not yet built in.
Perhaps the BOD have learned a few lessons from the past year and have decided to release positive stories a few days before quarter results. The media has spent a lot of time releasing a negative narrative around key dates for BT that never happen but tend to hit the price as many market makers do not understand the reality of upgrading a telecoms network. Also read today, ISP review, that O2 are thinking of selling off 50% of there telecoms mast management company, perhaps times are getting hard for some of the bigger network builders finding funding…
It is a shame that some on this board want to do nothing but tout criticism of the CWU and it’s members for taking part in legal industrial action. They make no mention of all the work that has been done by BT and the CWU in the past. The last strike action by members of the CWU was 35 years ago, prior to that there was a few days action in 1982 over privatisation. The successful company that BT has become since privatisation, leading the way with the national rollout of FTTP , helping the country grow with its business products, having a workforce that is available 24-7-365, is down to one thing. In almost 40 years, with the exception of a couple of weeks in 87, working together BT and the CWU have created today’s company, and it’s success for the company, it’s employees, shareholders, and the country . How quickly some will forget, or ignore this when it suits them or simply do not like employees having the right to fight for what they believe is the best way forward for all concerned. I left BT several years ago and have no in depth knowledge of the current dispute, and the same I guess can be said for those who are so vocal against the CWU. But without those 40 years of cooperation we would not have a successful company to invest in…
When I started this thread it was a sarcastic comment that appears to have been missed. Just after 12 noon yesterday our latest PM started answering questions in parliament. By the time she had finished the UK markets started to fall even further. None of the answers gave any confidence to the markets that she and her team know what they are doing. Helping with the cost of energy was accepted by the markets as a good thing to stabilise the cost of living and kept the markets on side, the rest of the financial statement has screwed everything, yet on and on they blunder. HaHo soon be Christmas, £5 anybody???
The E and D side is, with a very few exceptions, ISDN2, analog PWs etc,, used solely for phone and broadband . Most D side issues are down to the mix of copper and aluminium especially for broadband. That’s about it for copper the rest sits on fibre and those products are the ones that bring in real revenue and have the tightest SLGs when it comes to repair, there’s a big difference between 5 working days for broadband and 5 hrs for Totalcare. That’s not to say those SLGs will always be meet, some will slip, but if it’s on fibre as said before, without outside intervention, there’s nothing to go wrong. As for fibre build, well I live in a rural area and BT has recently started its FTTP build, all the work I have witnessed has been 90% contractors 10% OR and the contract work has not needed OR to also be present. That is likely true for at least 50% of the country wide build, so strike action will only have a marginal impact on the day to day build. As I have said, strike action will make the situation worse over time but it would take a lot of strike days for that to be a real and ongoing problem. The one element that may well have more impact on build is the loss of working days by planning functions causing delays, but not copper network faults…
“Delude yourself otherwise if it makes you feel like a right wing share holder…”
You are correct. The vast majority of domestic customers have a copper delivery to there premises, and small businesses, for delivery of phone and broadband products. For phone that is all the way from exchange to end user, but most copper delivered broadband is only copper from the street cab (DSLAM) the rest is on fibre back to the local head end . ISDN2 and Kilostream copper services have been replaced mostly by higher bandwidth products on fibre end to end or by mobile data products where bandwidth is not a concern, ie telemetry to say switch a water pump in the water industry. There are some rear locations where the above nay not work and a copper product is still used but very few.
The pressurised junction copper network was decommissioned many years ago and most of it pulled out of the ground to free space for fibre growth. All core products are fibre delivered, nearly all local end data products used by business are now delivered over fibre due not only to the copper being replaced but due to the bandwidth these products have, 2m to 10g.
Fibre itself just sits there transporting light, it is not affected by the elements that cause problems with copper. Unless disturbed by a man with a JCB or poor workmanship at a splice point, it in itself is ultra reliable . The kit on the end may fail, but that is rear nowadays. The core, and many customer networks are self healing, if one route is lost it simply reroutes until the lost link is brought back into service. So yes todays network is ultra reliable, unless it is compromised by an outside action.
As for those taking industrial action, that is there right, they have a legal process that has been followed, the CWU members have shown they believe they have for them genuine disagreement to peruse. I am not saying they are right or wrong, simply stating facts about the impact there action has on the day to day working of the network and it’s makeup.