BT OR Quick Win Team

Just a rant...

Placed an order for 1Gb fibre line into a business premises. The premises already had 8 BT fibres running into the building from it previous occupation. I have 90 days to get this working.

BT planner assigns the Quick Win Team (that is the official term - honest) to get a fibre working to the exchange some 2km away. 6 weeks later and 3 engineer visits and it's back to planning\survey stage.

Thanks a bunch - you have just wasted 42 days of my 90 day lead time.

SLOW LOSE TEAM!

In reply to a post by drummerjohn:

Thanks a bunch - you have just wasted 42 days of my 90 day lead time.

So..still got 48 to go

Having had dealings with BTor myself I can tell you that just getting the line to go live within the 90 days is good going.

When we moved offices back in July BT had assured our facilties department that the fibre connection would be working before the move, that was in March. We ended up running the office on the backup 4 Mbps down/ 400Kbps up ADSL line for nearly a month.

They say you should always test you're backup systems thoroughly.

Met with BT OR planner today for survey.

"No problem, we will have you up and running soon as long as your contractors don't damage the fibres."

Then I explained to him that the problem isn't our building but your nodes between here and the exchange that your Quick Win Team can't make work.

"Oh - I can't comment on that."

So what is the plan then?

"I will pass the details back to the team and see what we can do."

Oh jeez - what's the point?!

Pretty standard BT to be honest,

They always quote 90 days. This is to allow 80 days of screw ups and 10 days of actual work.

In reply to a post by Tam:

Pretty standard BT to be honest,

They always quote 90 days. This is to allow 80 days of screw ups and 10 days of actual work.

It took them 119 days to complete ours and all they had to do was blow fibre through local ducting. Assuming they can blow it from the nearest FTTC cab (the Exchange had FTTC, just not our village) it was probably about 2km of ducting :-/

Edited by Andrue (Thu 28-Nov-13 19:35:26)

An FTTC cabinet isn't a fibre node. For FTTx it's blown from the aggregation point. For leased lines, the nodes are separate, could be anywhere .

Openreach have stated the aggregation nodes are placed close to all cabinets.

I've never had a problem with BT/OR but they are a bit black hole internally.
Most companies you deal with provide a response and let you know when an engineer will visit. With BT/OR the first you know is when an engineer calls from his mobile saying he'll be there is 10 mins.

It works but I don't know how.

An aggregation node has nothing to do with leased lines (WES/BES/EAD etc)

I think you either replied to the wrong person or you are confused, it's ok though it is morning!

Good morning people

His reply does appear to me to be a direct reply to your post, and I'm sure he knows what he's talking about

He's saying leased lines are separate from the FTTx fibre network.

He's saying leased lines are separate from the FTTx fibre network.

..... and he is right.

In reply to a post by Zarjaz:

He's saying leased lines are separate from the FTTx fibre network.

..... and he is right.

Still - I assume they use the same ducting so if they've blown fibre to a cab that's on the way to our village it should mean the ducts are clear that far. From talking to people in the village there was no sign of BT until the day before it went live. Just seemed to me that BT did nothing for over 110 days.

In reply to a post by Andrue:

In reply to a post by Zarjaz:

He's saying leased lines are separate from the FTTx fibre network.

..... and he is right.

Still - I assume they use the same ducting so if they've blown fibre to a cab that's on the way to our village it should mean the ducts are clear that far. From talking to people in the village there was no sign of BT until the day before it went live. Just seemed to me that BT did nothing for over 110 days.

Hehe. Just had a similar conversation with the FTTC Coordinator for my part of the world...

Me: "When will Cabinet 14 go live?"
BT: "We've had some blockages, we think we've found the last one which is now due to be unblocked for 9th December"
Me: "Great news, but, it doesn't look like you've done anything, and you've even enabled Cabinet 22 which lies beyond Cabinet 14... so it seems that all three blockages have been in the last 20 metres? seems strange to need four months work to fix that?"
BT: "Well the ducting lengths are very short, so you wouldn't have seen them doing anything"
Me: "Well, maybe Cabinet 22 is fed from another Exchange? Maybe that explains?"
BT: "No, Cabinet 14 is definitely fed from your exchange"

At which point I just gave up. Not relevent to my cabinet.

I don't understand the full specifics and what blowing "Fibre" actually means.

My questions are:

Is that fibre just one fibre strand or multiples?
Can one fibre strand feed more than one cabinet (ie if you add a splitter)?
Are the cabs/etc daisy chained?

(at this point i'll explain that it seems odd to me that they may not have some kind of backbone in place then take feeds off that fibre to each individual cabinet or premise for a leasedline).

How many fibres can one of the sub ducting stuff support?

However am aware at this point that just because there is FTTC, doesn't necessarily mean you have a free route for an additional cable from t'exchange.

Don't take my response as an answer as Im curious myself.

In reply to a post by sjdean:

I don't understand the full specifics and what blowing "Fibre" actually means.

Had you followed the links to the Emtelle web site I gave you in one of my previous replies to you and the suggestion to watch B4RN's YouTube videos in another of my previous replies to you, you might have been more enlightened.

The Emtelle site will tell you about their fibreflow system, which is what B4RN are using and what I understand Openreach are using (though Openreach likely have other suppliers of similar products as well). The B4RN videos include fibre blowing and fusion splicing.


There's two differences between the Openreach and B4RN networks.

B4RN are using direct burial techniques - mostly moleploughing or trenching. Openreach are installing their fibres in ductwork. The difference is in installing the tubing - the fibre blowing and remaining steps are similar.

B4RN are running a duplex fibre to each served property - in essence, they're installing a switched Gigabit network. Openreach are installing PON for the FTTx roll-out. However, the different topology does not change the underlying fibre blowing and fusion splicing techniques. Openreach use the sort of trays seen in the B4RN videos to hold and protect spliced joints.

In reply to a post by David_W:

In reply to a post by sjdean:

I don't understand the full specifics and what blowing "Fibre" actually means.

Had you followed the links to the Emtelle web site I gave you in one of my previous replies to you and the suggestion to watch B4RN's YouTube videos in another of my previous replies to you, you might have been more enlightened.

Sigh. It's so frustrating speaking to you, which is why I've ignored many of your posts.

You snip posts and pretend you have all the answers and act as if everyone is beneath you, and you once again, have not actually answered anything.

That site doesn't go into very many details, however yes, I've already figured out from other methods besides the Emtelle website, but just from the anecdotes and what could be described as more detailed photographs out there, that there is some sort of sub duct technology with fibre blown through.

What isn't clear is necessarily what capacity the sub duct is, how many fibres are blown through, and how the network is actually laid out.

How many "fibres" are needed for a cabinet? Does each cabinet need its own sub duct? If you have three cabinets in a line from the Exchange, is that one "fibre" per cab, one fibre "bundle" (one or more strands) per cab, or does the furthest cabs signals travel upstream then get combined with the second cab, then further upstream through some sort of splitter or "aggregation"?

If they need to add capacity to a cab, presume more "fibres" are needed?

In reply to a post by David_W:

The Emtelle site will tell you about their fibreflow system, which is what B4RN are using and what I understand Openreach are using (though Openreach likely have other suppliers of similar products as well). The B4RN videos include fibre blowing and fusion splicing.


There's two differences between the Openreach and B4RN networks.

B4RN are using direct burial techniques - mostly moleploughing or trenching. Openreach are installing their fibres in ductwork. The difference is in installing the tubing - the fibre blowing and remaining steps are similar.

B4RN are running a duplex fibre to each served property - in essence, they're installing a switched Gigabit network. Openreach are installing PON for the FTTx roll-out. However, the different topology does not change the underlying fibre blowing and fusion splicing techniques. Openreach use the sort of trays seen in the B4RN videos to hold and protect spliced joints.

You didn't link to the B4RN videos, but I've googled them. They look fascinating.... The whole issue of splicing and bullets and trays are particularly interesting.

But again, for FTTC, is that what BT are doing, do they splice each cabinet to the next one upstream and so on and so forth up to the Exchange?

And as I realise I hijacked a Leased Line query, bringing it back on topic, would BT utilise existing subducts and blow one or more fibres from the Exchange?

I would imagine BT have several fibre networks. The Wholesale core, the fibre to cabinet and the ethernet business. I wouldn't expect they mix and match the networks. I would expect the FTTC network has an exclusive fibre spine.

But the tubes are in ducts so expansion is easy so long as you have duct space.

Fibre tubes are tubes. They could be divided into several tubes per cable, they could be unibore. You can blow more than one fibre into a tube.

B4RN is interesting as they appear to be burying tubes straight into the ground rather than using ducting. This will be cheaper but could be a mistake as any expansion it's back to the spade, any farmer ploughing it up and it will mean far mmore lengthy repairs. I am not aware of any other serious player doing it this way.

There isn't an FTTC network. Fibre between a cabinet and its headend exchange, that's all. There it is handed over to the CPs and their own backhaul which also handles ADSL2+. In BT Wholesale's case that is the WBC network.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

There isn't an FTTC network. Fibre between a cabinet and its headend exchange, that's all.

There likely *is* a network for providing FTTC, because it is also the nascent FTTP network too.

Today, fibre to 80 cabinets in an exchange can be thought of as 80 individual point-to-point routes. Tomorrow, when it is 25,000 premises on FTTP GPON's, there will be so much fibre that it needs to be ordered well, and that only happens by being ordered well from the start.

So today, we shouldn't see aggregation nodes as the end-points of a point-to-point star network. We need to see them as the junction points in a linear fibre spine, or a tree-branch structure for the future.

In reply to a post by WWWombat:

So today, we shouldn't see aggregation nodes as the end-points of a point-to-point star network. We need to see them as the junction points in a linear fibre spine, or a tree-branch structure for the future.

On this point, there is something I can reference from BT...

In an old post to this forum, I showed a research paper from BT on "light grids", which talked about the possibility of joining exchanges, and dual-parenting cabinets for redundancy.

The diagram on page 10 shows a fibre spine in such a setup, with a sequence of 8 "remote flexibility points" that allow joints to FTTC cabinets, splitters, and spurs.

Given that a joint at such a point is likely to require a splice, it isn't hard to picture a "remote flexibility point" as an aggregation node complete with splice trays.

I have no idea whether BT are implementing this kind of proposal, but it isn't hard to see how the same kind of spine can be used in the paths out from an exchange, even when they are single-ended.

And to bring this back on-topic...

With such a distribution architecture in place, with plenty of spare capacity in the spine in the form of dark fibre, it is certainly possible for a "leased line" business to be built on top of this distribution, where fibre only needs to be pulled back to the nearest aggregation node, and spliced into a point-to-point circuit rather than a shared GPON.

These fibres would probably need managing separately back at the OLT/Handover node, to ensure lack of contention.

Both good posts, but neither of them relevant to the current position. There is no FTTC network.

The potential for one is a different matter, as is FTTC's possible updating to FTTP. I forget the current FTTC capacity provision back to the exchange, but assume it would be relatively easy to upgrade that or the aggregation point capacities.

Come the dawn of ubiquitous FTTP, even then I would expect CPs to feed into their own backhaul at headend exchanges. So no "Openreach network".

It is possible to argue that every ISP currently has an FTTC network, but that would be rather stretching the definition.

UPDATE:
2 visits by fibre engineers to establish the fibres don't quite reach the node (so that's 5 in total)
6th visit gets fibre connected to a different node that goes off to a different exchange. I tell BT that wasn't agreed and circumvents our resiliency (BT running out of south side of building to Watford and VM running north out of building to their switch box).

Absolute shambles.

I didn't see any mention of asking for resiliency in your original post - did you?

In reply to a post by Gadget:

I didn't see any mention of asking for resiliency in your original post - did you?

No I didn't mention it here because it's not part of the original BT problem.

From my experience BT's planning when it comes to leased lines is terrible! If they make mistakes in the initial planning process they do not try to expedite the order to make up for delays, BT have too many systems and procedures that hold up their work.
Virgin Media Business on the other hand always come across more personal and can expedite orders if necessary, but obviously at a cost if they are not at fault.

In reply to a post by vit0:

From my experience BT's planning when it comes to leased lines is terrible! If they make mistakes in the initial planning process they do not try to expedite the order to make up for delays, BT have too many systems and procedures that hold up their work.

Sounds exactly like their planning/ordering process for telephone/broadband, only with more rope to hang themselves (or the customer) with.