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Hi folks. Just wondering what the limit is for PIA networks. Round here we've already got 3 and a 4th have started to install. I walked past one of the pits yesterday and it looked like a rainbow birds nest in there. Poles look like trees with numerous boxes and 26 dropwires and counting on mine alone.
I'm not complaining as I appreciate how I've got a decent choice of providers, I just thought that surely there's got to be a point that it becomes so crowded that it causes problems. In fact I've heard several stories of services being disconnected round here after another network has been in the pit.
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I've seen some crazy routes used by the alnets repeatedly. Shallow so multiple blockages, single ways with boxes every 20m. When there are deeper level multiway manhole routes adjacent.
I expect they are doing this because they are all using the same planning software and all using the route that is a metre shorter.
I also don't think anyone is looking at pole loading any more. So a bad ice and snow filled Winter could be 'interesting' with the additional weight on overloaded poles.
Things were better under Labour.
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What FibreBubble says … and I’ll add that it appears all and any existing copper joints encountered are unceremoniously dumped in the bottom of boxes.
This isn’t sour grapes, this is found as the cause of faults once or twice daily.
Large fibre nodes and tubing fitted in boxes making it impossible to lift copper joints out to work on.
Pole tops are indeed a big problem. So rammed with CBT’s that it becomes impossible to safely and comfortably work on once climbed. (No way to get the work position belt into a reasonable space.
As mentioned, no thought being given to pole loading … a really sharp cold snap with freezing temperatures and damp and rain before, and they’ll failing under excessive weight.
Progress.
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Because we moved some of the equipment from the exchange then to the cab, and now with the cbt's to the poles, we have lost the elegance of just having one line regardless of wholesale supplier. Long term i do think the industry needs to come together and work out a better solution to the high density areas.
I think we looked at the wrong reason for why poles can be a problem and not the real problem, safety.
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Towards the end of my days locating pressure and electrical faults on the esides, I would quite often have to get a box demolished and go in from the side in order to get to a large cable joint. An Altnet kicking off a valve or standing on things can be a very expensive business.
Boxes used to have planning rules on the number of duct entries permitted to keep structural integrity. I don't think anyone is looking at that any more either.
Things were better under Labour.
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I think we looked at the wrong reason for why poles can be a problem and not the real problem, safety.
Lots of money spent on equipment to ascend the ladder safely …. Naff all for working when you reach the top.
Many moons ago I dared to suggest that just one company should provide full fibre to all, and the various service providers would then just need cable links to the various head ends … made sense to me.
But venture capitalists saw a way to pile it high, flog it cheap, then sell their network back to the highest bidder … welcome to the wild, wild west . Ye ha !
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Many moons ago I dared to suggest that just one company should provide full fibre to all Imagine for a second that wasn't Openreach, would you change your mind if that affected your long term employment?? those sort of companies normally want cheap hirers not the best people!!
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Many moons ago I dared to suggest that just one company should provide full fibre to all, and the various service providers would then just need cable links to the various head ends … made sense to me.
But venture capitalists saw a way to pile it high, flog it cheap, then sell their network back to the highest bidder … welcome to the wild, wild west . Ye ha !
+1 and assisted by a Government with a fetish for competition, however unrealistic that may be in terms of the actual provision of a service.
If telecoms are a basic utility like electricity or gas why can the public not be served in the same way with a single electric connection, gas pipe and also a single telecom connection?
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Many moons ago I dared to suggest that just one company should provide full fibre to all, and the various service providers would then just need cable links to the various head ends … made sense to me.
in theory you could do that upto the pole, chamber with multiple cbts in there, and you just grab the end user user fibre cable. Or just switch at the olt (in theory).
Given what i've heard here, on tbb, i understand some places have gone pole crazy, and its not needed. ofcom is like "can you not do it, please ladies and gents"
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Many moons ago I dared to suggest that just one company should provide full fibre to all, and the various service providers would then just need cable links to the various head ends … made sense to me.
in theory you could do that upto the pole, chamber with multiple cbts in there, and you just grab the end user user fibre cable. Or just switch at the olt (in theory).
It's still going to the same OLT. The multiple CBTs doesn't reduce congestion on poles or in chambers and still same OLT and port making it pointless.
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Many moons ago I dared to suggest that just one company should provide full fibre to all, and the various service providers would then just need cable links to the various head ends … made sense to me.
As long as that one company either provides point to point fibre or at very least is entirely independent of BT Group and is incentivised to offer cutting edge products to maximise revenue with no legacy business concerns agreed.
Why not Openreach? 1.8 Gbps downstream, 115 Mbps upstream on a 2.5 Gbps down, 1.25 Gbps up shared network, artificially asymmetrical to avoid PON threatening the incumbent's lucrative Ethernet portfolio. Doesn't really scream that the business is into the technology and should be the sole provider of full fibre to the nation, does it?
History says they'd sweat the nuts out of GPON for as long as possible and continue to act in the commercial interests of the group not the wider market. We don't need the sole provider sweating old technology as they did copper with competition from altnets being the only thing forcing their hand into a wider fibre deployment: isn't that long ago G.fast from the cabinet was the future for most and if too far away, probably tough. 3% more commercial FTTP coverage planned.
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I don’t recall saying it ought to be Openreach ?
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Because we moved some of the equipment from the exchange then to the cab, and now with the cbt's to the poles, we have lost the elegance of just having one line regardless of wholesale supplier. Long term i do think the industry needs to come together and work out a better solution to the high density areas.
I think we looked at the wrong reason for why poles can be a problem and not the real problem, safety.
If only there were some technology where a single fibre line could be switched between providers and they could use whatever they wanted be it PON or AON to light it.
Isn't going to happen. Openreach made their choice and the rest was inevitable.
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I don’t recall saying it ought to be Openreach ?
I don't recall saying you did, only that if it wasn't dark fibre it couldn't be them. Dark fibre, regulated, doesn't matter.
Edited by XGS_Is_On (Thu 18-Apr-24 20:33:35)
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The ship has sailed on that, you're not getting a single network of point-to-point fibre that goes back to the equivalent of a "meet me" frame in an exchange. The best hope for PIA is altnet consolidation and removal of equipment from failed providers to reclaim some space, and Ofcom allowing Openreach to impose some sort of minimum standards on the work being completed. The best angle for their lobbyists to attack this on might be to play on fears of the security risk associated with letting anybody open up chambers with fibres in without any sort of audit trail that matches the reality of the activities taking place.
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Or just switch at the olt (in theory).
That is exactly how the Openreach wholesale FTTP service works today. CSPs buy "cablelinks" into a switch next to the OLT, which gives them the traffic for their customers.
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I've noticed that round here, where we've got Netomnia building out over Openreach, with Giganet looking to be following behind, that the pole equipment is already looking rather...fussy. I suspect that it's already going to be tough for an engineer to go up the pole to commission a new customer and if one or two more providers start throwing up their own kit, this will become rapidly untenable.
That said, I also can't ignore the fact that Openreach failed to bring fibre up my street for 5 years after the initial "fibre is coming" email, yet an altnet have managed to do it in the space of 3 months, having a bit more willingness to break out the shovels when they find blocked ducts. While having a single provider (OR or another - I don't think it matters) delivering the underlying physical fabric sounds a good idea, that provider absolutely, 100% must not suck and must have a universal service obligation that goes beyond supporting fax machines. I'm not sure that, right now, I would want any single organisation to be doing this as if they refuse to tackle the tricky stuff (as OR have done round here), there are very, very few other options for homeowners that don't cost very large sums of money.
My assumption is that consolidation will probably happen over time anyway because of the vast cost in rolling out any physical infrastructure and that practical considerations will eventually align with commercial ones. I note that Brsk and Netomnia appear to be discussing a possible merger (they have relatively little network overlap) and I'm sure this will be the first of many to happen.
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Many moons ago I dared to suggest that just one company should provide full fibre to all, and the various service providers would then just need cable links to the various head ends … made sense to me.
But venture capitalists saw a way to pile it high, flog it cheap, then sell their network back to the highest bidder … welcome to the wild, wild west . Ye ha !
+1 and assisted by a Government with a fetish for competition, however unrealistic that may be in terms of the actual provision of a service.
If telecoms are a basic utility like electricity or gas why can the public not be served in the same way with a single electric connection, gas pipe and also a single telecom connection?
I think everyones missing a crucial part of the "Ye ha!" puzzle. You begin with stacks of companies, all named random "buzz" word + Fibre e.g. NextFibre, WeFibre, LitFibre, YESFibre, GoFibre, etc...
You churn them out of various off-shore locations with little to no accountability over who the real owner is. When the interesting accounting practices come to light and the auditors caught red handed drinking whisky on ice whilst shredding documents in the marriott business lounge, the fibre company picks up the phone to both "The cable cowboy" (great book) and our favourite private equity firm who own everything else. They purchase it for billions via debt, push up the prices 4 fold and 20 years later we have a single provider where at least half the bill goes on servicing the billions / trillions in debt.
Plus we scrapped the national roll out of fibre in 1990, as the governments "Cable Authority" was just fabulous in ensuring huge competition, lots and lots of companies (how'd that turn out) and no full fibre local loop monopoly over a single BT line. Looking back, it seems kind of dreamy. Ironic how the US ended up in the same situation when AT&T was broken up and their full fibre ambitions crashed in a similar manner.
Did we learn lessons from the past? Seems not. Maybe we need a government led "Fibre Authority." Or even better, can we get the wonderful Baroness Dido Harding to strategise over it? 
Edited by ukhardy07 (Sat 20-Apr-24 09:06:35)
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I thought for years that "Dido" was actually shorthand for "did nothing".
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Maybe we need a government led "Fibre Authority."
Ask Australians what they think about the National Broadband Network.
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NBN was undone by poor quality auditing of the condition of the existing network, and an insane kneejerk response to economic conditions resulting in thinking that VDSL would be suitable for a country with the population density of Australia
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Did we learn lessons from the past?
"I wouldn't start from here".
To me it seems don't let politicians interfere as they try to predict the future and even with the best advisors, are mostly wrong.
24 years of broadband connectivity since 1999 trial - Live BQM
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Would you trust the same people to competently set up and regulate an NBN? They'd likely just tell Openreach to do as they please and we'd all have available whatever looked vaguely competitive with Virgin Media at a similar price point much as we did before.
I can't say the idea of the UK almost singlehandedly keeping GPON kit production in operation in a decade when the cutting edge is 100GPON, XGSPON is starting to wind down and 25/50GPON is today's XGSPON really enthralls. Liberty Global and BT Group would be grateful, though.
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Did we learn lessons from the past? "I wouldn't start from here".
To me it seems don't let politicians interfere as they try to predict the future and even with the best advisors, are mostly wrong.
We've known for years that BT was wanting to roll out full fibre to the premises back in 1990. Stopping it was a huge mistake by Margaret Thatcher.
I've just found a very good two-page write-up about the debacle that has followed. It's quite depressing  . (My underlining):In 1990, a single decision by then-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher had a devastating effect on the UK's broadband deals infrastructure for the next 20 years and for the foreseeable future.
In a little known story about the UK's broadband history, Dr Peter Cochrane, former Chief Technology Officer at BT and all round tech guru, tells TechRadar how the UK lost the broadband race way back in the 90s.
...
Dr Cochrane knew that Britain's tired copper network was insufficient: "In 1974 it was patently obvious that copper wire was unsuitable for digital communication in any form, and it could not afford the capacity we needed for the future."
He was asked to do a report on the UK's future of digital communication and what was needed to move forward.
"In 1979 I presented my results," he tells us, "and the conclusion was to forget about copper and get into fibre. So BT started a massive effort - that spanned in six years - involving thousands of people to both digitise the network and to put fibre everywhere. The country had more fibre per capita than any other nation.
"In 1986, I managed to get fibre to the home cheaper than copper and we started a programme where we built factories for manufacturing the system. By 1990, we had two factories, one in Ipswich and one in Birmingham, where we were manufacturing components for systems to roll out to the local loop". Thatcher stopped it.
Later in the same link:The two factories that BT had built to build fibre related components were sold to Fujitsu and HP, the assets were stripped and the expertise was shipped out to South East Asia.
"Our colleagues in Korea and Japan, who we were working with quite closely at the time, stood back and looked at what happened to us in amazement. What was pivotal was that they carried on with their respective fibre rollouts. And, well, the rest is history as they say.
Edited by pluralist (Sat 20-Apr-24 15:47:35)
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Post deleted by pluralist
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Your quotes are broken. Its history, I suspect a large majority of people posting on these boards weren't around in 74. We have to move forwards, not look back.
30+ cable firms made sort-of sense in 1990/91, the plan was to make money on the voice calls, and hopefully sell television to compete with the analogue Sky. However the launch of PCN in 1993 and 1994 showed that mobile phones were going to much cheaper in infrastructure costs. By 1999 the cable firms were having to sell internet access; and one might argue that today Virgin Media is more an internet company than a TV or phone company.
It appears nobody in the early 90s government(s) anticipated the internet, or the changes it would bring. BT's Cochrane and others were talking about fibre for decades, but fundemantally this was for voice.
24 years of broadband connectivity since 1999 trial - Live BQM
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Quotes fixed. The outside ones were the problem as needed removal, being in fact irrelevant as what was enclosed now stands and worked anyway.
The whole point of my post and its linked article, partially quoted, was to give people that history.
I disagree strongly with your understanding of Cochrane's foresight, "In 1974 it was patently obvious that copper wire was unsuitable for digital communication in any form, and it could not afford* the capacity we needed for the future", and your interpretation of the reasons for Thatcher's decision. "In 1986, I managed to get fibre to the home cheaper than copper" and BT started building the factories to make the kit. Operational in 1990.
All in the last two paragraphs of my first quote from the article plus the second quote from it. BT were going ahead with the build and rollout of full FTTP until stopped. As quoted, Japan and Korea went ahead with the tech and the factories and their machinery BT were forced by Thatcher to scrap/sell.
* Some readers may not be familiar with the usage there of "afford" meaning "provide".
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Connections: Pixel 6a on Three 4+ (LTE)/5G, OnePlus 8 Pro on EE in reserve. At home Three Mobile, with (Three)ZTE MC888 router giving 5G most of the time..
Edited by pluralist (Sat 20-Apr-24 18:25:18)
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their machinery BT were forced by Thatcher to scrap/sell.
As I said at the start, politicans can't predict the future. They were driven by non -technology factors, whereas Cochrane was driven by improving technology. In 100 years time we may be able to determine whom was right and whom was wrong.
The IT press debated this a number of years ago; and concluded neither the politicians, nor Cochrane were fully right or fully wrong. It will take historians in decades to come to conclude.
I am glad we don't have a state owned monopoly, as some other countries have. Thankfully, in most built up areas, there is competition for Openreach. If there was not, I would today be stuck with 40 Mbps downlink and 4 Mbps uplink.
24 years of broadband connectivity since 1999 trial - Live BQM
Edited by jchamier (Sat 20-Apr-24 18:36:52)
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All well documented and unfortunately all academic. We are where we are.
Virgin Media are absolutely an Internet business. Phone paid the bills for a while and Internet took the mantle. The XGSPON areas only have Over The Top TV as an option.
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All well documented and unfortunately all academic. We are where we are. History is fascinating, but doesn’t change where we are today.
Virgin Media are absolutely an Internet business. Phone paid the bills for a while and Internet took the mantle. The XGSPON areas only have Over The Top TV as an option. Friends of mine moved away from VM when the recording TV box stopped actually doing a recording for most of the channels and just sent you to on-demand.
24 years of broadband connectivity since 1999 trial - Live BQM
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It is inevitable but for now infrastructure competition maximises the chance of newer tech and market advancement.
FTTP at first glance its like wow we doing it albeit even if its a decade late, but then read we using tech thats already "old" on "new" deployments aka GPON.
CityFibre already announced plans to deploy XGS-PON and like other alt-nets full up/down speeds but from what I can observe OR have no public plans to deploy above GPON and will probably maintain these slightly better than 10:1 up/down ratios.
Cant help but feel that would be what we would be stuck on if everyone was just reselling Openreach local infrastructure. This is the company that didnt even bother with vectoring and still dont have g.inp on a large portion of its VDSL footprint, just sweat it all. Then they tried to deploy G.Fast in a way it wasnt intended to be deployed.
As a bonus they also not even deploying in most of my city, it seems the densely populated city isnt enough of a business case. They have one of the strangest FTTP rollouts I have seen with it being quite rural heavy.
Told some European friends I am finally getting 1000/1000 soon, and they like thats meh, one has 5000/5000 and the other is soon to get even faster.
Edited by Chrysalis (Sun 21-Apr-24 20:15:27)
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CityFibre already announced plans to deploy XGS-PON and like other alt-nets full up/down speeds but from what I can observe OR have no public plans to deploy above GPON and will probably maintain these slightly better than 10:1 up/down ratios.
Or not: see the 1800/120 Mbps product. The 1200/120 Mbps manages 10:1 but 180 Mbps on GPON just a bridge too far: that 1000/220 Mbps business service with the £600 (Inc VAT) install fee and monthly rate over double the 1800/120 and 2.5 times the 1000/115 won't sell itself and, apparently, no-one else will sell it either.
They're behaving like a cable company restricted by a below mid-split HFC network 
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Yeah forgot about that one.
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