Birmingham CMSPR - Cabinet 13 - Conspiracy Theory

You know, I think I was right to claim a conspiracy theory over my cabinet.

Yes, my cabinet, Cabinet 13 on the CMSPR Birmingham Exchange, is now the only cabinet in this exchange area to still be waiting for fibre to the cabinet. It is the closest to the Exchange, barely half a mile from two cabinets to the west and one cabinet to the east.

It was one of the first to have had its fibre twin installed and a new shell on the PCP at the start of July and was hopeful for a roll out by the end of September.

Engineers worked til about 9pm at night in the dark uncovering blockages and filling them in for 11 and 12 to the west about three weeks ago.

They've even got the cable to the manhole cover on the main road about 220 metres away - I looked in when they were doing 11 and 12 and it's all there ready to go. That was getting on for three weeks ago.

Latest thing now on my cabinet, they need to install two metres of trunking right next to the cabinet.

Er.

That's it? That's the hold up? So far, that cabinet has had about 10 metres trunking installed across a side road to join the PCP and FIbre Cab and now needs an additional two metres trunking.

Wow. World record.

Seven months to decide they need to install 12 metres of trunking? The latest one requiring two metres, what are OpenReach doing? Do they bother checking the trunkning in the immediate vicinity when laying a cab so that they can schedule similar works in the same vicinity? It's like they find a blockage, don't bother checking anything else, give up and raise with BT planners who spend five weeks drawing up plans then clearing that blockage. Wait another two weeks for the cablers to come and find another blockage, and then do that one! You seriously telling me that when they were looking at 11 and 12 and 14, that some bright spark never thought about checking the trunking at 13? It's in the vicinity, less than half a mile away, could be done at the same time? 11 and 12 were done at the same time (100m away from each other). 13? Nope.

You realise all that inefficiency costs us money?

BT can stuff off. I would like fibre, but waiting this length of time for 12 metres of trunking, I realise Im happy with my ADSL connection. Im not going to make a rash decision. Might order it some time in September if I get any offers through.

Simon

Edited by deleted (Sat 15-Feb-14 11:44:16)

That sucks.

But living so close to the exchange surely you have pretty good ADSL?

Until this week I was on 1.5 mbps down since September. So it could be worse

sjdean

the business is deploying and dealing with hundreds of cabs each and every day give or take -- majority of those are now not in the commercial programme -- any problem on a cab can move it 7 - 8 months out in deployment (especially if it is on commercial build - or can even remove it altogther-- if the copper is not done the cab wont work -- cant do the copper until the cab is stood or the power and duct work is confirmed -- if the spine work was compllcated and expensive and could have rendered the cab uneconomic and this could have seen it removed from the commercial programme why would spend money on the conneciton if you have 5 elements to make your cab wortk woudl you spend money on element 5 if element 3 means that that price is then over spend and not viable and is removed- you would do them sequentially so you manage your costs rathet than spend money on a cab that may not get deployed

Edited by deleted (Sat 15-Feb-14 13:47:15)

Sorry to hear it sjdean. This is taking so much longer. Unbelieved. Hopefully it might be ready by end of this month or next month.

But you're missing the point. The cab was stood, had power connected, they identified an alternate route to get the fibre to it, connected the copper, have connected everything else up around it that's barely 500 metres away, there is fibre to a manhole cover 220 metres away, yet again more delays. Seven months delays to install 12 metres of trunking.

They've done more work on that to other cabinets in a much much quicker time frame. The idea its unviable is laughable. This is got to be one of the more easier jobs to complete judging by how little work they've had to do. It's just taking them a stupidly long time to do it. They've not done the work in a consistent way, and they have not worked methodically by working on this cabinet for example while they were looking at the other three all of which in a five hundred metre radius. Planning seems totally off.

The works in progress but hasn't even been started. May be activated by the middle March. But frankly, I can't be bothered with it anymore. Im totally bored. If BT call, I'll tell them where to get off too.

Yeah, not bad ADSL wise. Always could do with more....

Oh yeah, one of the cabs, Cab 11 was hamstrung with a section whatever notice due to recent footpath works preventing digging up. BT negotiated and come up with a plan with the council and came back and did that one together with Cab 12. Cab 13, once again, ignored. For what? Massive trunking issues? Heavy road works? Wayleaves? No. 2 metres of trunking. It's about 500 metres from Cab 12. They couldn't have found the issue at the same time and done the work on the same day as 11 and 12?

Ridiculous.

You do realise that the planning officer in charge has seen your posts and stopped work on your cabinet don't you? Just to annoy you some more.

Im in the same position as you. so you're not alone.

ever thought openreach are swamped (excuse the pun) with the flooding and bad weather bringing lines down and stuff im afraid you may be bottom of the pile right now as personnel are deployed elsewhere

Well that explains now. But the last seven months? Even three weeks ago? Yeah. fail.

I think that's probably more likely. Although why just upset me when I know other people on the cabinet eager to get it.

sjdean, I had sent you private message.

sjdean the commercial rollout is a commercial decision at least your cab is till in the programme and not pulled !!!!

I reckon Openreach planners don't just have economic data in their planning spreadsheets, nor just predictions about takeup. I reckon they really deploy conspiracy-theorist detectors too...

When the quota gets too high, all common sense is parked. They deliberately leave the cabinet there, tantalisingly close, and re-plan. The new plans is set up to tease and antagonise the theorist as much as possible, by showing agonisingly slow progress.

They obviously understand the theory that negative publicity is better than no publicity at all, and arrange to feed conspiracy theorists with as much fodder as they can muster.

I mean, why else would they do this? There can be no other reason, right? And what's a few thousand pounds in subscriptions compared to the fun they're having!

In reply to a post by Fastman2:

sjdean the commercial rollout is a commercial decision at least your cab is till in the programme and not pulled !!!!

Although my point is the apparent abject failure for OpenReach to plan this in any meaningful way. Surely having to keep revisiting cabinets to clear blockages in a sequential rather than parallel manner and not working on immediately neighbouring cabs at the same time, only serves to fundamentally prolong and increase the cost of the roll out and therefore the cost to us as consumers.

I realise your post is tongue in cheek. However the delay on my cabinet is actually, when you look at the facts, completely absurd. Come up with some meaningful explanation rather than the standard cut and paste and I'll probably agree with you. Seriously, 7 months delay to find an "alternative route" and install 12 metres of trunking. Closest cab to the exchange and no other work en-route has been seen or noted.

sjdean this is around logistics and milestones if you need to find x number of cabinets by X date you do all the one with no hold up that dont miss their slot - add to the the milestones around BDUK and a fully scheduled workstack that booked months in advance any problems such as duct , pwer or permission issud and you miss a slot on a cab it migh ttake 7 - 8 months or longer to find another slot -- this is around the scale of the programme that seen in excess of 45,000 cabinets installed over the last 4 or so years (also the commercail programme is completing 2 years earier than originally expected

Edited by deleted (Sun 16-Feb-14 21:43:46)

I wonder if they have moved some of these problem cabinets over to BDUK schemes, one of our local cabinets NDRAM21 has always been scheduled, but has only just been installed. Yesterday I noticed some road works nearby that mention BDUK, cab 21 is the only cabinet nearby which isn't live.

In reply to a post by sjdean:

I realise your post is tongue in cheek. However the delay on my cabinet is actually, when you look at the facts, completely absurd.

Annoying (when you are on the receiving end), certainly. I know because I was on the same receiving end myself. Absurd? Hard to know without the facts.

Come up with some meaningful explanation rather than the standard cut and paste and I'll probably agree with you.

The problem here is that you don't actually know the facts. You only know the outcome of various plans, as visible in the street or on a roadworks website - and plans may have shifted enormously hidden from view. And you don't know what went wrong on each occasion some workers tried to do something, either on the ground, or in the planning dept.

Fastman's explanation is right - that BT's rollout is planned on the basis of minimising rollout costs. It seems that 50% of the costs are labour costs, so it makes sense to be absolutely sure that every worker is as fully employed as you can make him. Not one moment spent twiddling thumbs because power couldn't be connected, or because a duct was blocked, or an existing duct turned out to be full.

BT know that some percentage of cabinets - perhaps 10% or 20% - will have problems. And that the problems cabinets won't always be known in advance.

The key to keeping every worker fully busy is to over-plan the cabinets by that 10-20%, knowing that a % will go wrong. Leave them to one side, and let workers come back at some future time to fix things - in a later iteration of the plan.

If things go wrong a second time, then this policy gets repeated. And perhaps again and again.

That, overall, provides a good reason as to why, when a problem is hit, a cabinet gets put back for a considerable period. It needs a new slot in the local manpower plan.

Other reasons include delays caused by things that BT have no control over. Delays caused by weather, by the power companies, by planning dept's, and by roadwork notification delays. Councils can place an embargo on roadworks to force overnight working, or to avoid schooldays.

There is also the fine that councils can give out if roadworks take longer than planned. That also incentivises BT to fill in a trench with work unfinished, and come back another day - but only when new roadwork plans and new manpower plans are in place.

In some places, the cost to connect a power supply is taken to absurd extremes. The normal figure should be around £1,000 but the power companies do not charge "average" amounts; instead they charge the actual incremental cost... and if your connection takes a transformer out-of-spec, then you get to pay for a whole new transformer upgrade. Three cabinets in North Yorkshire became unviable because the cost for power suddenly went to £90,000. A change like this from the power company puts a real dampener on your rollout... but you won't see this mentioned on roadworks.org

BT would behave differently if they followed a "minimise delays" doctrine to the rollout, but they aren't. They aren't even following a "minimise costs for each cabinet" doctrine, which is why it doesn't matter if the odd cabinet is left unconnected for 7 months. Instead, they are following a "minimise costs nationally" doctrine, which tends to favour "easy" cabinets first, and "hard" cabinets later and slower. At 1,000 cabinets per month, there are plenty of easy ones to get through.

Annoying when it turns out that your personal cabinet is a "hard" one, left by the wayside. But not, in the national sense, absurd.

My first cabinet was delayed by power problems. Every other one in the area went live in November/December 2010, but mine didn't. It took 3 attempts to dig and find power for it, with roadwork notification causing a delay each time - and each time, the end result was a new set of tarmac going off in a new direction. I finally went live in June 2011.

In truth, there is so much that you don't know and don't understand, that makes it difficult to draw any real conclusions. Except that I can be pretty sure that it isn't a conspiracy to delay your cabinet alone.

In reply to a post by WWWombat:

Fastman's explanation is right - that BT's rollout is planned on the basis of minimising rollout costs. It seems that 50% of the costs are labour costs, so it makes sense to be absolutely sure that every worker is as fully employed as you can make him. Not one moment spent twiddling thumbs because power couldn't be connected, or because a duct was blocked, or an existing duct turned out to be full.

Sure, technical issues do exist. No argument there, but what Im saying, when checking the ducts 250 metres to the east for those two cabinets, why didn't they check the ducts in the other direction? And why does it appear that they stop at one duct instead of checking the whole planned stretch instead of find one blockage, clear, find another blockage, clear, find another blockage....

Sure, engineers are "always on the job" but there's surely going to be an enormous amount of driving round from one location to the next.

In my perhaps naive mode, it would have made more sense to check the ducts in either direction from the manhole cabinet, get the work scheduled in on all three given their physical proximity for duct clearances, and then get the FTTC enabled on all three. Or, is that too simple?

In reply to a post by WWWombat:

The key to keeping every worker fully busy is to over-plan the cabinets by that 10-20%, knowing that a % will go wrong. Leave them to one side, and let workers come back at some future time to fix things - in a later iteration of the plan.

If things go wrong a second time, then this policy gets repeated. And perhaps again and again.

Though strangely, there even seems to be an order here, so there's a percentage of those cabinets with problems that get immediate fixes, others get mid term fixes, others just get put at the back of the pile.

And those fixes range around here anywhere from 100 metres of trunking, to 2 metres of one way poly duct. And the amount of trunking and blockages do not seem to indicate whether a "problem" cabinet gets a quick fix a has to wait.

In reply to a post by WWWombat:

That, overall, provides a good reason as to why, when a problem is hit, a cabinet gets put back for a considerable period. It needs a new slot in the local manpower plan.

No argument there, that's to be expected. My point is when there are cabinets with 500 metres of each other not sorted at the same time. And of course the considerable period varies, so some wait a considerable period, others a consderable period and then some!

Again, my cabinet hasn't suffered with power or wayleaves. They had to find an alternative route which they found pretty quickly once identified. Their main time was spent waiting for an aerial solution which didn't materialise. Things then seemed to be in progress when they installed the trunking between the PCP and the FTTC across the road in under a day. Now there's an additional two metres of trunking to install and Im left wondering why they didn't bother checking the trunking when they were checking their neighbours!

Gah.

Pathetic.

I was even told by the fibre engineer where they were bringing the fibre to... so it has got to within 200 metres of the cabinet, by they just didn't check Cab 13's route, but checked 11 and 12 300 metres away.

Silly.

In reply to a post by Fastman2:

sjdean this is around logistics and milestones if you need to find x number of cabinets by X date you do all the one with no hold up that dont miss their slot - add to the the milestones around BDUK and a fully scheduled workstack that booked months in advance any problems such as duct , pwer or permission issud and you miss a slot on a cab it migh ttake 7 - 8 months or longer to find another slot -- this is around the scale of the programme that seen in excess of 45,000 cabinets installed over the last 4 or so years (also the commercail programme is completing 2 years earier than originally expected

More ridiculous chest beating. You don't work for BT do you?

I've always said, I can understand if they'd had multiple blockages, or road works on the way, but, nope. Nothing like that here. There is very little reason I can see why it couldn't have been processed at the same time as at least, cabs 11 and 12. The fibre has made it to a manhole cover 200 metres away. Further on from there, that same fibre 300 metres to two other cabinets. They were working through the night through to 9pm to get those two done and find the blockages, but for some reason they couldn't come the other way? Nah. That's just poor planning.

The trouble is you don't have all the information and probably never do.

Either, BT cocked up and wasted money and time or BT had other issues/priorities as to doing the work. Without the full internal understanding of priorities, challenges and costs you will only ever be guessing. We can all point of things in all walks of life and say "why didn't they just..." - in some cases "our" way would be better but in others they did the most sensible thing we just don't have the info to understand it.

If BT had to do a full report on every cab about why there are delays to satisfy the general public then the programme would run for a lot longer than it is.

I know it is frustrating but in the end it is their job and their choice. They don't have to provide broadband and they can do it in any way they like - whether it makes sense to everyone else or not.