FTTP commissioning phase?

All the FTTP infrastructure for our BDUK project is now in place. The team were out today testing it up and down the stretch including the CBT's and Openreach have stated that it will now require moving over to the commissioning phase with the aim of going live to accepting orders early Nov.

Can anyone advise what's involved during this phase? I'm led to believe it's all just computer based work rather than on site now. What do they actually have to do now to commission it?

In terms of what the commissioning people actually do cannot say, never met one that I know about.

Seems to be several weeks, if the first connections on new OLT (headend) or mini-OLT (rarer) then it might be slower.

Believe it is all about making sure that all the backend systems can talk to everything, monitoring is all correct and build has been correctly i.e. risk for those doing building work that area might be pushed back for remedial work to be done.

zebb_edi

Never done FTTP commissioning but was involved years ago with commissioning MSANs in the exchange.

Simple description with enough detail for the technical minded.

Involves getting each box to register with the controlling software ( OSS:- Operational system support) and checking that communications works successfully. This may involve building and routing management VLANs through the core network. ( Red side security network).

For FTTP I suspect it would involve building all the management VLANs to each Splitter and again checking that they also communicate correctly to the OSS.

Checking that all management stats are correctly received and appear in all relevant front ends.

Then building all the correct connections ( VLANs) for customers to use to connect to and through the core network.

Once this is all setup it may (should ) involve setting up a test connection on each splitter segment to ensure that the correct identity has been assigned to each splitter / OLT . Otherwise it may all look good but it may be talking to a different physical box than the one you think!

Once this is complete CPs can have their cable links and logical connectivity built via the OSS automatically and ONTs can be registered and customer connections built via the OSS in an automated fashion. ( This is what happens when an engineer connects a new ONT and provides the identity to the OSS and it then cascades through doing the build on each element and hey presto the service works.).

If anything doesn't work correctly it is back to the field. I believe we have seen some symptoms of OSS build mis matches on some threads in here.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

In terms of what the commissioning people actually do cannot say, never met one that I know about.

Seems to be several weeks, if the first connections on new OLT (headend) or mini-OLT (rarer) then it might be slower.

An email (part) reply from Openreach direct to myself regarding time scale re commissioning.

Good afternoon Mr *******

I hope you are well.

I’m glad things are getting done and I will pass your information on to *****. I did try to contact her this morning to ask if there has been any progress on the road closure, but she hasn’t come back to me yet.

I will come back to you as soon as I get a response. Once the splicing and light loss testing has been done the commissioning can take between 5-7 working days to complete, but I will ask if this can be done as a priority.

Kind regards

*********

[email protected]

Hopefully your “commissioning” is relatively straightforward. My on demand connection took nigh on 7 weeks to get through “commissioning / audit”. About 3 weeks after they announced they were starting commissioning, it was discovered a new rack was needed at the exchange “to carry the fibre tie cables and we have been advised that this will take 2 – 3 weeks. Only once that has been completed will the OCR estimate be able to progress.” Then there were some OCR “mapping” issues, which took another week to resolve. Then finally the actual commissioning took a further week.

And just for an update it went live this morning overnight! 900mbit package ordered from zen!

So took 3-4 days in total, although I do know that it was requested to be expedited by the council.

I also just want to say a big thank you to some individuals on here, some very useful replies and I was also in contact directly with some who gave some very useful information which they didn't have to do.

Edited by zebb_edi (Sat 24-Oct-20 09:34:27)

Glad its all live now, enjoy the extra speed

Congrats buddy that was very quick.

Enjoy your new found 910 / 110 package as I will when it finally arrives.

Sounds reasonable, mine was slower as there was a new mini OLT involved in the commissioning

Andrew

With a new 'box' type they will also be testing that the process and box interworks correctly with the OSS. This can sometimes be an issue as with software, people and processes it is often right 2nd time not 1st time.