Should Openreach employ more women?

In April an all in one cabinet was installed in our village. In June the fibre was connected, the telephone lines transferred from the old cabinet and we were told that orders for superfast would be taken from the end of July.

We have now been told that it will be at least the end of September and probably several weeks after that because Openreach have to agree a protocol with the ISPs on how to transfer over the few premises that have a VDSL service from the old cabinet. This was something that I would have thought would have been addressed at the planning stage, not post installation.

Perhaps if Openreach employed more women they could introduce the concept of multi-tasking so that project plans can include tasks to be done simultaneously and not, as it appears now, only sequentially.

In reply to a post by gerarda:

Perhaps if Openreach employed more women they could introduce the concept of multi-tasking so that project plans can include tasks to be done simultaneously and not, as it appears now, only sequentially.

In my experience women aren't that much better at multi-tasking and attempting it causes more problems than it solves. I'd rather tasks are done sequentially and done properly than concurrently and done poorly. Mind you with openreach we don't seem to get either option

On the more serious side of women in engineering jobs:
You can't just go out and 'hire more women'. You can only hire the people who are available and sadly women have always been underrepresented in engineering. I'm not sure why but I suspect it starts at a very early age.

My experience of female computer programmers (a grand total of three during my thirty year career) is that they do more planning upfront and take the whole exercise more seriously. They seem better able to understand that they are controlling a machine whereas men often see the whole exercise as an ongoing dialog. I don't have enough data to say whether they do a better or worse job but I suspect that as with men their good points balance out their bad points and they do as well any human

In reply to a post by gerarda:

Perhaps if Openreach employed more women they could introduce the concept of multi-tasking so that project plans can include tasks to be done simultaneously and not, as it appears now, only sequentially.

What a sexist comment...

Could be the issue is the isp's not responding.

Oh dear.

Jokes are often a very good way of making a serious point. I think it an excellent and non-sexist OP about Openreach's often poor project planning. Then there are different multi-tasking capabilities between women and men has been researched several times - one example.

Openreach are dealing with a very complex process, but getting there with commendable speed. In many cases there is nothing wrong with their planning but the unforeseen involved in a lot of underground work on decades-old infrastructure built when computers hadn't even been invented, never mind data communications of the kind we now have, cannot sensibly be built into the plan. Along with that the triggering of each step for each individual cabinet seemed to be event-driven, in that it pointless to request power supply to a cabinet until it us known the FTTC cabinet will ultimately (a) exist, and (b) be precisely in the expected place. All that can be pre-arranged is that the power company involved is made aware of the installation plan with rough dates.

Add in local authority procedures and ....

They therefore apparently adopted the philosophy of team deployment in relatively small areas, but if a particular cabinet proved particularly awkward for some reason it does got temporarily or permanently dropped, in favour of the rest of the area, and the subsequent areas in the overall national project.

Hence all the ongoing delays many unfortunate end users experience, sometimes periods of years.

In the scenario the OP complains about we have an unusual situation, though by now it should be a standard procedure for the relevant department to be liaising with CPs about the changeover. Swapping the phone lines over is routine, but swapping from one FTTC cabinet to another far less so. The new one may even be fed from a different exchange.

Having said that, as an experienced project manager I consider the differences highlighted in the example research aren't highly relevant to what the OP is complaining about. It is a pure failure in the particular project planning, a skill of which I'm not aware of any male/female difference in performance.

So I disagree with the OP's humorously put suggestion. But was it being sexist? No!

It is the first time I've heard of there being a migration protocol to be agreed upon with ISPs (and their clients), though it certainly makes sense, and it raises a couple of questions...

- Perhaps ISPs have complained about the lack of a protocol, so this one is the guinea pig? It is the kind of thing I'd have expected to see in the BTW ISP Forum, but don't recall seeing it.

- The migration for previous FTTC customers is surely a combined one - the physical copper must be switched at the same time as the ports in the two DSLAMs are switched over.

As @gerarda says the copper has been switched over, does this mean
- FTTC customers weren't switched into the new PCP, or
- FTTC customers were switched into the new PCP, but remain in the old PCP too?

If the copper for non-FTTC subscribers has switched, then there doesn't need to be a hold-up that stops them ordering. Unless they use up all the resources too quickly.

There are women involved in project management of cabinet deployment. By sheer coincidence I happen to know one.

They have certainly done something to the fibre because my speed has dropped from a stable 2.2Mbps to an unstable 1.5, and the other person I know who has a "superfast" service has had his speed drop from 5Mb to 2Mb with the same lack of stability that I am now suffering from.

That may or may not be a related problem. Has your phone started crackling?

You seem to be saying you are on the old FTTC cabinet, whereas the impression I got from your OP was that you were frustrated at not being able to order FTTC.

Are people actually ordering and getting connected on the new one?

(And @WWombat)

I wonder if something we "know" doesn't happen has been temporarily done?

Is it possible all phone lines, including the OP's, have been transferred to the new cabinet but there is a problem of the kind I suggested previously? That the new FTTC cabinet is fed from a different exchange and the OP has temporarily been back-wired to the old one for FTTC? For whatever reason Openreach have wrt liaising with one or more of the existing CPs.

To my mind that could explain both the speed loss and possibly the instability now reported.

In reply to a post by WWWombat:

It is the first time I've heard of there being a migration protocol to be agreed upon with ISPs (and their clients), though it certainly makes sense, and it raises a couple of questions...

I wonder if "protocol" actually means timings of the tasks rather than the actual tasks themselves. And it may also require the ISPs to have presence in a second exchange if the new cabinet is connected to a different exchange to the first.

I am frustrated at not being able to get Superfast speeds with a cabinet only 200 metres away.

In reply to a post by gerarda:

I am frustrated at not being able to get Superfast speeds with a cabinet only 200 metres away.

I am frustrated at not being able to get Superfast speeds with an advert for Superfast visible from my window.

Plenty of women Openreach engineers and loads of women in the offices of BT Group in general.

that's called live to live --and it involves moving the exising VDSl Service from the oringal cab to the new cab -- without massive disconnection and the customer being disconnected for days -- or perhaps you would prefer that following your sarcastic response -- they cannot do the the llive to live until all equipment is in place and the move has to be agreed wirth the owing ISPO or IPS's

I can understand the need to communicate and liaise with the ISPs to do the move. What is not understandable is why the protocol for doing this was not agreed months ago.

I am frustrated at not being able to get Superfast speeds with a cabinet only 200 metres away.

Patience being a virtue often attributed to women ........

(I'll get me coat.)

you cant do live to live until both cabs are up and technical operational !!!!!
once that is the case there is a set process to go through

Don't know if gender would make a difference

but both times i've had an engineer round for a fault its been a woman.

You are missing the point. Please read my original post again.

I thought your opening post was partly joke and partly serious.

It has become clear you just want to have a rant and don't want possible explanations.

In reply to a post by gerarda:

You are missing the point. Please read my original post again.

How about you read your Subject again? Instead of getting rude.

I said in my original that we have been told that the installation is complete and the hold up from July to beyond September is because the protocol for changing over existing customers has not been agreed. Fastman is saying a) the installation is not complete and b) there is an agreed process. Both these are completely contrary to the information we have been given.

I asked your three questions earlier. You replied to something I said in that post but did not answer a single one of the questions. They were relevant to what you say in this post.

Your Subject is either sexist, as suggested by the second replier, or a semi-serious joke to make a point. Which is the way I took it. It is certainly completely irrelevant to your rant, and you should not be rude about people responding to the Subject. That's what people do.

The final paragraph of your OP. Serious? Or pure sarcasm?

You haven't said who is telling you anything. It could be a series of first-line support, possibly in India, or it could be someone from Group High Level Complaints. It makes a difference to the reliability of what you have been told.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

The final paragraph of your OP. Serious? Or pure sarcasm?

Given the lack of any







I think the answer is pretty clear.

In reply to a post by gerarda:

Openreach have to agree a protocol with the ISPs on how to transfer over the few premises that have a VDSL service from the old cabinet.

Sounds like the ISP is perfectly able to come up with porkies with the current gender balance.

It is not the ISP saying that but Better Broadband Suffolk quoting Openreach.

Gerada

they have to be engineering complete which means all work in physically done but not handed over to service providers

you have to do live to lie between engineering complete and handover to service providers -- that's a fact -- cab cannt be offered for service until that is complete

Agreed - but why was the procedure to do so not agreed in the planning stage instead of being left until everything else was done ?

It probably was - it will be the same as they have done many times in the past. It will be the timing of what happens when and that will depend on a lot more things such as other ISPs having capacity/backhaul in place, any agreements for continuity of service or notice for planned outages ... Due to the dynamic nature of install timings it is not always possible to define a handover to service date until ALL engineering is complete.

Following on from what MHC just posted, many ISPs, particularly some smaller niche ones, will have most of their customers as SMEs with online turnover in £millions dependent on their internet service.

Their customers will have contractual Service Level Agreements with their ISP(s), (they will often have more than one ISP but not all of those who do will have a backup service that doesn't go through the same cabinet), and the ISPs will have corresponding SLAs with Openreach.

Co-ordinating all that without breach of contract once the technical capability is in place has to take a while. The first feasible date is not known until all is ready.

The following is what we were told, and it does suggest that it has not been done many times in the past

"They (Openreach) have confirmed that all the engineering works have been done for the new cabinet and it is ready to go live.

The last part of the work that needs to be done is for OpenReach to agree with all the service providers how they interrupt any existing customer�s broadband service while the transfer takes place. They effectively need to agree a protocol on how to do this. As we are part of a trial (one of four in Suffolk) before this type of service is rolled out nationwide, OpenReach have to agree all the processes that would work in any situation, not just here. This is despite the fact that this only affects a handful of premises (current customers who have got some semblance of superfast broadband) "

So, they are using that cabinet pair as Guinea Pigs and will have a task in their project and programme plans to work out a NEW efficient and effective method that will minimise impact and satisfy all stakeholders. It would be pointless to do that until the cabinet is ready or near ready as they will want to work though and try it out immediately. they now have to negotiate will all stakeholders and finalise how it will be done.

I cannot see anything wrong with their methodology in how they are dealing with it - but maybe having 35 years experience in managing communications projects worldwide gives me a better perspective.

Pretty sure I've seen infill cabinets go live on cabinets that were already live - so there may be no new 'processes' involved, but simply going through the existing one used elsewhere and the joy of chinese whispers.

There is of course the chance that providers have asked for a change to the procedures, and this is the first cabinet pair to be using a new procedure.

That was my thought, however if the quote is correct then a change to the methods used is being trialled.

But have the infill projects involved transfer of users already on FTTC Andrew, or just new ones in an area not covered previously? The OP and friend are already on FTTC at the old cabinet, and something has caused their speeds to fall.

The ones I've seen were long lines with estimates of nothing to 17 Mbps, so may have been a live user, when doing coverage runs go too fast to stop and delve into every mystery. Will set a note on the next one I spot to keep an eye on old speeds, and when new moved user speeds start to appear.

Live to live which is what is being discussed is challenging and occurs when a new cab (CAB B) is interested deeper into the network than tis existing cabinet (CAB A) -- and affect s those that hav an exisiting VDSL service from CAB A -- normally at very low speed) so you have to move all the eixisting VDSL services from CAB A to CAB B before you open CAB B for ordering --

this issue comes when you have people too far from CAB A on VDSL order an VDSL services from CAB B before the A - B people have been migrated -- this means VDSL trying to get to 2 cabs down the same cable which can cause massive dropout and massive performance issues

Thanks for that .

As I see it, you have just completely explained the problems reported by the OP of loss of speed and stability on the FTTC service they and friend are experiencing.

Or if the OP hasn't done that, someone else has.

Edit: Is there any possibility

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

Is it possible all phone lines, including the OP's, have been transferred to the new cabinet but there is a problem of the kind I suggested previously? That the new FTTC cabinet is fed from a different exchange and the OP has temporarily been back-wired to the old one for FTTC?

has also happened, or is the quote a word that the censor would remove ?

Edited by RobertoS (Wed 17-Aug-16 22:31:02)

Once the new cabinet was installed no more orders for VDSL were being taken so there is no one getting VDSL from the new cabinet.

Delays in getting service providers agreement may not be helped by the cabinet not yet being given a postcode location on the BT database, On codelook it is down as "FTTC doing Field Survey, live due by April 2017" and I had to direct an Openreach telephone engineer to it last week when he came to fix a line fault as it wasn't on his records.

gerada ignore everything -and stopl trying to look at stuff as it wont be correct !!!!

if the order book is closed -- they have done that deliberately so the can deal with the live rto live migration process (and no compound the problem) and nothing can happen until that iis completed !!!

once the live to live is done the order book will be open to the CP's

We know not to rely on "stuff" - the amount of misinformation produced by Better Broadband Suffolk and BT is astonishing -but you would have thought BT would tell their own staff where the cabinet is located.

In reply to a post by gerarda:

you would have thought BT would tell their own staff where the cabinet is located.

Engineering staff do have access to network maps and other information about the location of infrastructure. However, if you know where new infrastructure is, it's easier and kinder to point the member of staff to it, rather than make them check information sources that might be missing a very recent update, leaving them either to stumble across it themselves or contact someone who can find out where it is.

You seem to be really down on Openreach. As has been pointed out to you, they have to manage the live to live transition of all active customers moving to the new cabinet before that cabinet can be opened for orders so as not to cause horrific crosstalk issues. This involves co-ordination with various stakeholders and there needs to be a high degree of confidence that the new cabinet is fully functional. It would be bad enough to connect a single new customer to a new cabinet only to find the cabinet is malfunctioning. It is far worse to take multiple customers with a working but slow connection, then break their connections by transferring them to a new but faulty cabinet.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

I wonder if something we "know" doesn't happen has been temporarily done?

Is it possible all phone lines, including the OP's, have been transferred to the new cabinet but there is a problem of the kind I suggested previously? That the new FTTC cabinet is fed from a different exchange and the OP has temporarily been back-wired to the old one for FTTC? For whatever reason Openreach have wrt liaising with one or more of the existing CPs.

To my mind that could explain both the speed loss and possibly the instability now reported.

I've thought about this a little more, especially after @fastman has talked about the live-to-live migration, and the reasons why you can't start selling new services before migrating the old: preventing crosstalk is a much better answer than merely preventing over-selling.

Adding extra copper, or altering the routing, "temporarily" could indeed explain some of the changes in performance - either purely because of some extra length, or by allowing crosstalk to exert undue influence. I guess the former would appear (on any service) if extra copper appeared in the D-side, while the latter would appear (on VDSL2 services only) if extra copper were in the E-side.

In reply to a post by gerarda:

Perhaps if Openreach employed more women they could introduce the concept of multi-tasking so that project plans can include tasks to be done simultaneously and not, as it appears now, only sequentially.

Ah, the old "women can multi-task" media myth -

Although the idea that women are better multitaskers than men has been popular in the media as well in conventional thought, there is very little data available to support claims of a real sex difference. Most studies that do show any sex differences tend to find that the differences are small and inconsistent.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_multitasking

Can't blame you for mentioning it, it's the sort of gender garbage mainstream media sites like the BBC promote.

Gerada


To answer the tongue in cheek question!
Openreach new apprentices seem to be split 50:50 men:women so the balance is changing. It will take time before the whole of OR gets close to balance but a significant number of the fibre planners are women, (I know some of them!).

Remember that a previous OR boss was a women, Liv Garfield.

Edited by kitcat (Mon 22-Aug-16 22:34:26)

In reply to a post by Spud2003:

Ah, the old "women can multi-task" media myth ... it's the sort of gender garbage mainstream media sites like the BBC promote.

They would have to anyway- gender differences like that are very much non-PC these days, regardless of their validity.

And it can be phrased the other way around- men can devote 100% of their attention to the task in hand, women get side-tracked easily.

There's good evolutionary justification for it too- looking after house, home and sprogs (who may show a desire to shave the pet sabre-tooth ) needs multi-tasking, catching dinner (that can run faster, has bigger teeth and objects to being speared) needs concentration...

Are applicants actually naturally applying at a 50:50 gender split or are Openreach deliberately favouring or searching out female candidates?

I do have "superfast broadband", with the FTTC only 10 Metres away from my front door - I can see inside it from my lounge window when its doors are opened - the PCP is about 40 Metres away; but because of the routeing of the original phone wiring on a green-field site in 1967, the working distance from the FTTC to my front door is about 300 Metres!

No obvious obstructions, all of the main ducting involved and Exchange connections, both wires and fibre go past my lounge window, with a 3-section chamber there as well.

In reply to a post by WWWombat:

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

I wonder if something we "know" doesn't happen has been temporarily done?

Is it possible all phone lines, including the OP's, have been transferred to the new cabinet but there is a problem of the kind I suggested previously? That the new FTTC cabinet is fed from a different exchange and the OP has temporarily been back-wired to the old one for FTTC? For whatever reason Openreach have wrt liaising with one or more of the existing CPs.

To my mind that could explain both the speed loss and possibly the instability now reported.

I've thought about this a little more, especially after @fastman has talked about the live-to-live migration, and the reasons why you can't start selling new services before migrating the old: preventing crosstalk is a much better answer than merely preventing over-selling.

Adding extra copper, or altering the routing, "temporarily" could indeed explain some of the changes in performance - either purely because of some extra length, or by allowing crosstalk to exert undue influence. I guess the former would appear (on any service) if extra copper appeared in the D-side, while the latter would appear (on VDSL2 services only) if extra copper were in the E-side.

I had two engineers, one telephone, one broadband visit to try to sort out the loss of speed and stability. They both said the new cabinet is fed from the old one and not directly from the exchange.

Well after a delay of nearly 4 months whilst Openreach supposedly sorted out the protocol for those with an existing fibre service the new all in one cabinet is now accepting new orders and promising a 50-76 meg service. Unless of course you already have a fibre service in which case you are still limited to 2-3 meg and the ISPs are having to raise faults with Openreach to find out why.

P**s ups and breweries spring to mind

that means they did not do the live to live correctly as those with existing fibre services should have been moved first to the new cab and then those without would have followed on - which is want I explained about 3 months ago -- which was a
a sensible response to your sarcastic thread !!!!

In reply to a post by Fastman2:

that means they did not do the live to live correctly as those with existing fibre services should have been moved first to the new cab and then those without would have followed on - which is want I explained about 3 months ago -- which was a
a sensible response to your sarcastic thread !!!!

In this case events have shown my sarcasm to have been justified.

assuming you had a fttc enabled line I would be checking my service provider to see whether my line was moved under Live to live -- of course your service provider has the ability to say no if it wants to

In reply to a post by Fastman2:

assuming you had a fttc enabled line I would be checking my service provider to see whether my line was moved under Live to live -- of course your service provider has the ability to say no if it wants to

Plusnet have raised it as a fault with Openreach as I implied in my earlier post With different Openreach systems giving conflicting information Plusnet support are as confused as everyone else.

In reply to a post by Fastman2:

assuming you had a fttc enabled line I would be checking my service provider to see whether my line was moved under Live to live

You'd think such a change would be noticeable... such as a huge increase in sync speed.

In reply to a post by WWWombat:

In reply to a post by Fastman2:

assuming you had a fttc enabled line I would be checking my service provider to see whether my line was moved under Live to live

You'd think such a change would be noticeable... such as a huge increase in sync speed.

It has certainly not been migrated - this is from Plusnet's test report on Monday

"Estimated Line Length In Metres 2712.5"

The new cabinet is only about 200 metres away

In cases where providers use a line profile mirror there is a chance it might not.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

In cases where providers use a line profile mirror there is a chance it might not.

I am not sure what a line profile mirror is but I would have thought that if the issue was resolvable by Plusnet they would not have escalated it to Openreach

The sync speed would increase but throughput may not until the ISP profile catches up. So WWWombat is correct.

BT Wholesale circuits, such as all Plusnet's broadband products, have a IP Profile set by BT Wholesale which limits the speed of data sent to the MSAN/DSLAM so as to avoid it arriving there too fast to be transmitted from the exchange in the case of ADSLx and the cabinet in the case of FTTC. Without it there could be packet loss at the MSAN/DSLAM, which is the kit that turns the underlying digital traffic to analogue for the final leg to the user where the user's modem converts it back to digital.

Plusnet and several other ISPs get an automatic reports of IP Profile changes, which occur immediately the connection speed changes except on ADSL Max. Plusnet read the accumulated reports three or four times a day and set an internal figure called the Current line speed. They set it fractionally below the IP Profile.

The poster will be calling that by its generic name - a profile mirror.

Because of the non-realtime action that adjustment can be hours after the IP Profile change. It also occasionally happens that the automatic update by Plusnet fails, in which case it either has to wait for the next time the IP Profile changes or has to be manually set by CS.

Edited by RobertoS (Wed 19-Oct-16 17:23:50)

gerada those distance make no sense as you would not get any FTTC speeds at 2712 metres -- about 1500 max and then very sub 15 probably

that suggests you did not have an FTTC service and that you need to fund one

In reply to a post by Fastman2:

gerada those distance make no sense as you would not get any FTTC speeds at 2712 metres -- about 1500 max and then very sub 15 probably

that suggests you did not have an FTTC service and that you need to fund one

Your reply suggests you have not read the earlier posts in this thread - but to save you reading them all I will quote the relevant bits of my posts

"In April an all in one cabinet was installed in our village. In June the fibre was connected, the telephone lines transferred from the old cabinet and we were told that orders for superfast would be taken from the end of July. We have now been told that it will be at least the end of September and probably several weeks after that because Openreach have to agree a protocol with the ISPs on how to transfer over the few premises that have a VDSL service from the old cabinet."

"Well after a delay of nearly 4 months whilst Openreach supposedly sorted out the protocol for those with an existing fibre service the new all in one cabinet is now accepting new orders and promising a 50-76 meg service. Unless of course you already have a fibre service in which case you are still limited to 2-3 meg and the ISPs are having to raise faults with Openreach to find out why."

I don't suppose I should be surprised but the result of all Openreach's planning is that I have been without a broadband service since Monday and it may be weeks, even months before Openeach can restore it.

As I am clocking up mobile data charges to post this I wont go into detail, suffice to say let's just hope no one in Openreach's planning gets a job at Airbus or Boeing. Being told the problem is "complex" is not a lot of comfort if you are in an aircraft that is plunging from 30,000 feet.

It gets resolved very quickly however.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

It gets resolved very quickly however.

It does indeed - a couple of minutes before the aircraft hits the ground.

There was someone on here who went through a hellish ordeal under similar circumstances.

He was from Northern Ireland, and the "beneficiary" of one of the first all-ine-one cabinets. It ought to have improved his speed, but didn't.

IIRC, TalkTalk was the ISP, and managed to lose his original FTTC connection, and eventually gave up with no circuit, even going through the executive-complaints department. It took a shift to AAISP to get things working.

My memory is hazy on all the details, unfortunately.

Could the length you state, "2712 Metres", be the total cable length from your house to the Exchange, ie either the original distance before the AIO box was installed; or possibly the updated distance inclusive of any alterations to accommodate the AIO box.

To date, I have never seen any official (BT OR) measurements of "cabinet to house" distances.

Where forum participants have mentioned "cabinet to house" distances, these have been generally unofficial, eg guestimated, measured in degree or implied by FTTC/VDSL Download Attenuations.

As I mentioned earlier, my PCP is about 40 M away, the FTTC is about 10 M away; but the phone line takes 250 M from the PCP plus 50 M for the VDSL link, 300 M total to get to my house, on a 1967 greenfield site.

Although my house and the adjacent houses are the nearest to the FTTC and second nearest to the PCP, we are listed as being likely to have the slowest VDSL out of the whole estate.

And slower than the furthest houses on another estate, 1978 greenfield, these being around 400 M geographic, straight-line distance from the same PCP, so probably around 600 M cable distance.

In reply to a post by eckiedoo:

Could the length you state, "2712 Metres", be the total cable length from your house to the Exchange, ie either the original distance before the AIO box was installed; or possibly the updated distance inclusive of any alterations to accommodate the AIO box.

To date, I have never seen any official (BT OR) measurements of "cabinet to house" distances.

Where forum participants have mentioned "cabinet to house" distances, these have been generally unofficial, eg guestimated, measured in degree or implied by FTTC/VDSL Download Attenuations.

The 2712m is from a plusnet line test. The old cabinet is about 2.5Km by road. The exchange about 6KM in a straight line.