What does "BIK" on the road mean?

Gigaclear dug up our rural lane months ago, installing pots outside most houses, and actually doing quite a nice job with the tarmac they laid down the middle of the road over the trenches they'd dug. One end of the lane is able to order service. Ours is not (I think because they're planning to use Openreach poles rather than install pots... but not sure that's relevant to my question)

Anyway, the tarmac has recently been spray-painted in various places, with letters that look either like "BLK" or "BIK". Sometimes with an arrow alongside.

I know it doesn't actually matter, in terms of when service will be available to order but do any of the experts on here know what this text is intended to mean?

Blockage in underground duct perhaps, just a guess.

Perhaps Connectorised Block Terminal - CBT?

Blockage.

Thanks all. Yes - 'blockage' would be plausible.

The CBT theory is also interesting, given the plan to piggyback on existing Openreach poles.

I guess we'll find out eventually.

CBTs will be going on Openreach poles or existing chambers, not in the ground on their own. It's duct blockages. They'll clear those and put CBTs on the existing Openreach poles you mentioned if that's their plan else they'll build their own Toby boxes outside each property. I've never heard anyone mark CBTs on pavements: they'd mark the chambers the CBTs are going into, not the CBTs themselves. CBTs are not part of the digging and aren't marked for construction folks. They go in chambers the construction folks build and those chambers will be marked with how many ways duct goes from them and whether footway or carriageway. You'd see boxes drawn with FW2, FW4, CW6, or whatever and directions ducts are going from them.

Everyone uses Openreach chambers for CBTs, put them on Openreach/own poles or use cabinets with ducts from Toby boxes outside homes. Sometimes a combination ending with a cabinet or Openreach chamber. Virgin Media are the exception in very specific cases but even then they aren't digging chambers just for CBTs, they're digging them partly outside of new cabinets being used as part of upgrading their cable network. It's just not a thing.

Edited by XGS_Is_On (Sat 02-Mar-24 23:25:02)

Thanks - makes perfect sense.

I've spotted at least four of these markings along a short stretch of road... if it really does mean a blockage (meaning they need to dig up the brand new tarmac to fix the problem?) this 'after the fact snag fixing' must be super expensive for them.

this 'after the fact snag fixing' must be super expensive for them.

Not really, when you consider how many miles of existing duct they get access to gratis.

In reply to a post by Zarjaz:

this 'after the fact snag fixing' must be super expensive for them.

Not really, when you consider how many miles of existing duct they get access to gratis.

It's not gratis though...

https://www.openreach.co.uk/cpportal/products/passiv...

Not every blockage need a dig to clear it.

In reply to a post by Davey_H:

In reply to a post by Zarjaz:

this 'after the fact snag fixing' must be super expensive for them.

Not really, when you consider how many miles of existing duct they get access to gratis.

It's not gratis though...

https://www.openreach.co.uk/cpportal/products/passiv...

Yes, sorry, not free, for peanuts .

In reply to a post by Zarjaz:

this 'after the fact snag fixing' must be super expensive for them.

Not really, when you consider how many miles of existing duct they get access to gratis.

This is brand new Gigaclear ducting! They spent ages digging up our long country lane, installing their ducts or whatever is they laid, and installing pots outside almost everybody's house. It's this tarmac that now has lots of 'BLK' marks on it.

It so happens that they stopped about 500m from our house. They then switched to a different model for our part of the road, where they dug trenches between existing bits of Openreach infrastructure (eg between two poles) but didn't install any pots. This is why I'm guessing they plan to serve our end of the lane from the Openreach poles rather than with pots. There's nothing special about our end so it's something of a mystery why they're doing it this way.

But the 'BLK' stuff is on the brand new Gigaclear tarmac that primarily serves the new Gigaclear pots (but will, I assume, also ultimately be what carries our traffic once the Openreach integration is done)

Inevitable after they sweat the copper for as long as they did and insisted on PON for FTTP to try and ensure it couldn't be unbundled.

The regulation could be a lot worse to be fair. BT could've spun Openreach off entirely, their decision not to which was more than some were given. Could have a similar solution to France with plant access, or the Japanese solution of compulsory separation. The plant and existing PON could've been rolled into an NBN and BT left as a retail company only.

If it weren't for HMG you'd be working for Altice UK if not by now, soon, going by Mr Drahi's machinations.

Many of the tail-winds the stock has hit are self-inflicted. Nonetheless the former boss still seems confident of crushing the competition so even with access to the plant for free/virtually nothing it's apparently all good still.

I wouldn't be surprised if the extra 10%-odd for point to point fibre construction doesn't seem such a bad investment now.

Edited by XGS_Is_On (Mon 04-Mar-24 10:55:14)

The whole UK telecom sector is not making shareholders any money.

BT and Vodafone shares performing terribly, VMO2 shareholders recently writing down the value of their holding in the company £3.5Billion, Altnets losing their backer's money hand over fist.

Bit of a stretch to think this is down to the BT rollout's choice of fibre technology or it's settlement with the regulators that lead to Openreach.

Edited by FibreBubble (Mon 04-Mar-24 10:55:32)

In reply to a post by FibreBubble:

The whole UK telecom sector is not making shareholders any money.

Any form of business that requires a very large initial degree of capital expenditure is likely to lose money in its early stages.

In reply to a post by FibreBubble:

The whole UK telecom sector is not making shareholders any money.

BT and Vodafone shares performing terribly, VMO2 shareholders recently writing down the value of their holding in the company £3.5Billion, Altnets losing their backer's money hand over fist.

Bit of a stretch to think this is down to the BT rollout's choice of fibre technology or it's settlement with the regulators that lead to Openreach.

Had BT run with point to point fibre and sold that rather than wanting to run active networks and sell bitstream PON PIA wouldn't be a thing, changing the regulator settlement substantially, and altnets wouldn't be spending billions putting fibre into Openreach plant. I see the argument for VDSL however G.fast from cabinets was laughable.

BT Wholesale could happily be lighting fibre they lease from Openreach and selling that to both their own retail arm and loads of others with the fibre market looking more like the LLU copper market.

So, yeah, between the regulators and BT's decisions I think a fair amount of blame can go there. In the mid-late 2010s Ofcom were still waffling on about how FTTP and infrastructure competition were unnecessary as BT had G.fast in their pocket, BT were contemplating how little they could invest while coining it in, Liberty Global's growth in the UK became non-existent so they were building to get customer numbers up, and building with coax.

Ofcom and UK attitudes in general can take a lot of blame. Seemingly wanting to be both a North America for telecomms, no networks shared, insanely expensive, and a Europe and failing at both.

Going at the pace they are and when they are has ensured that FTTP will be substantially more expensive for BT than it could've been had they been building it for longer over the ZIRP.

Vodafone and mobile networks in the UK in general are a strange one. Certainly some pain being felt as companies have to come to terms with that the UK is considerably poorer than it likes to think it is and their business models wanted to think it is though we are in a period of higher than normal capital expenditure at the moment with a fair amount of technical debt needing to be paid for, too.

Edited by XGS_Is_On (Mon 04-Mar-24 11:13:44)

I'd heard of Drahi but knew nothing about him. Just read his Wiki page. Impressive businessman, but scary.

A genuine question though, not being awkward. You have me puzzled with this:

Nonetheless the former boss still seems confident of crushing the competition so even with access to the plant for free/virtually nothing it's apparently all good still.

Which former boss please? I read you to mean that he is now running one of the altnets, with BT part of the competition.

Have I got that wrong? Or, a thought that occurred while typing that, is there a typo and you meant "the former's" boss, Allison Kirkby"?

https://www.techradar.com/news/world-of-tech/how-the...

Vodafone and Virgin are hardly newbies. Yet, Like BT, Voda shares are pants and Liberty and Telefonica have written down the value of VirginO2 by £3.5Billion.

In the case of VirginO2 I think their extensive duct network should be available to PIA in order to foster competition and overcome the ridiculous pole rush that we are seeing at the moment.

I expect xgs is referring to Mr Jenson and his prediction that it will 'end in tears' for the altnets.

In the case of VirginO2 I think their extensive duct network should be available to PIA in order to foster competition and overcome the ridiculous pole rush that we are seeing at the moment.

Agreed.

In reply to a post by FibreBubble:

In the case of VirginO2 I think their extensive duct network should be available to PIA in order to foster competition and overcome the ridiculous pole rush that we are seeing at the moment.

It might happen
https://www.theregister.com/2024/02/19/virgin_media_...

The VM proposal isn’t an equivalent to PIA , it’s simply they will offer wholesale access , fact is , PIA is an imposition, no network will freely offer it unless under duress, if VM ever offer PIA it won’t be voluntary but mandated by the regulator

Is the PIA being mentioned here an abbreviation of Physical Infrastructure Access?

In reply to a post by 4M2:

Is the PIA being mentioned here an abbreviation of Physical Infrastructure Access?

Yes, the link up the thread defines, repeated here, required of Openreach by Ofcom in 2019.

https://www.openreach.co.uk/cpportal/products/passiv...

Thanks for repeating the link - so in the context of this thread there is a stipulation that for any contactor "You’ll need to follow our engineering principles and health and safety standards for any work you do."

If there are duct blockages perhaps there might be a requirement for Openreach to do the repair?

I believe altnets using pia can clear blockages themselves, but should be doing so to openreach spec. It would be easy for them to do a quick bodge to get their own fibre through, whilst leaving the blockage present, only for it to be excavated again at later date. However openreach will pay altnets for civils work so long as they submit evidence for auditing.