Broadband for Milton Keynes

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BT Meeting

Here's my report from our meeting with BT, held on 14th November 2003 at Phoenix House.

BT Attendees:

John Small

Director of Customer Satisfaction, BT Retail Business Improvement

Bradley Borum

BT's Milton Keynes Broadband Champion

Serena Shukla

Customer Satisfaction Business Analyst, Milton Keynes Broadband Single Point of Contact

Geoff Gauntlett

 Involved with the technical side of ADSL.

MK Broadband Action Group Attendees:

David Hoskins

Electronics sales engineer, working for a semiconductor manufacturer based in San Jose, CA.  He is reliant on a SOHO (Small Office / Home Office) Broadband connection to gain access to his company's intranet, and his colleagues sending email with the odd 2MB PDF attachment.
Large emails may be de rigeur in California, but in Milton Keynes this causes him to twiddle his thumbs for an hour or so as he downloads his e-mails.

John Bint

Business Development & Strategy Consultant. Various links with MK's business community. Involvement in local politics as Middleton Ward spokesman and recent Conservative candidate for MK Council. Representing Broughton and Middleton.

Nick Hubbard

Milton Keynes Broadband Action Group Coordinator.

Report Summary

Bradley Borum and John Small are genuinely keen to solve the Broadband problems we have in Milton Keynes. Bradley is tasked with analysing the problem, and it will be several weeks before she can present any business cases to John Small.

There are some very long cable runs within some areas of Milton Keynes. One reason is that some of the main grid roads didn't exist when the cable infrastructure was laid down, so vital cables may go round "3 sides of a square" in some cases.

Analysing the paths taken by these long runs is one of Bradley's current tasks.

BT normally use very thin copper cables feeding out from telephone exchanges. These are connected to thicker cables for the majority of the length from exchange to the green cabinets in the estates.

The gauge of copper that has been used for some of the routing within Milton Keynes is thinner than would be desirable. Thinner cable has higher levels of signal attenuation. Work is going on to find out exactly where the thinner gauge cable has been used, and whether there are any runs of it where upgrading it would bring a solution to a useful number of customers.

Meeting Details

Bradley has audited 29 of the 52 estates within the Bradwell Abbey telephone area. That is data has been collated but not yet analysed.

An explanation of the local loop was given by Geoff.

Cable Air Pressure diagrams have been used to acquire "E-side" cable data. The ADSL signal attenuation can be calculated from gauge of wire used and cable length.

Business Case

The "Top Ten" PCP's will be analysed. The most problematic Primary Connection Points will be identified. (These are the green cabinets within the estates set by the road side.)

A business case for each one will be made. What is the cost for each length and gauge of replacement cable? Will underground ducts have to be installed if the cable is re-routed?

An example was given: a short cabling run may cost around £12k. An excavation with new ducting could cost 4 times that.

Initial observations:

Loughton has long "D-side" runs, over 800 metres.

64% of PCP's are fed with 0.4 gauge where 0.5 was expected.

Investigations with signal testing have highlighted cable degradation on some cable runs.

Comments

Nothing of the old "North Bucks Villages" telecoms infrastructure remains. There may have been a few 10 pair cables originally.

The new (1970's) exchanges completely replaced the old. The planning rules for telephony 10dB loss at 1.6kHz, typically 5km line length.

Monkston was recently cabled with 0.5mm gauge "E-side".

Why can't new lower loss cable be run in?

Lower loss cable is thicker. There may not be physical space free in the ducts. Pulling the old out and running in the new is not an option: it's too disruptive.

Copper is expensive.

Other Broadband technologies

BT are looking at trialling other broadband technologies. They extend the reach of at the expense of reduced speed. The technologies being evaluated are:

• half duplex (bi-directional but runs at the max possible rate in either direction but not at the same time)
• true rate adaptive systems.
• Wireless (Point to multipoint. This would involve a single ISP. Radio Planners will be surveying Milton Keynes with Geoff in a few week's time.)

These trials will involve BT employees. John Small would like to see participation from Milton Keynes Broadband Action Group members too. (They may be reluctance from some parts of BT about this.)

Evaluation

John Small will evaluate all options. Specifically asked if re-cabling would be delayed, awaiting evaluation of technical trials. "No, if re-cabling can be justified, it will be carried out."

Next Meeting

Our next meeting will be held in February 2004. BT expect to give us a clearer update on how they intend to address households with over 60dB line loss.

We also hope to have answers to this sort of question: why is the cable run from Fishermead 3km to Monkston, 7km Middleton, 11km to Broughton? We would expect 3km to Monkston, 3.5km Middleton, 4.5km to Broughton.

John Small said "At the next meeting there WILL be something tangible to report!" We could tell he was on our side - he was as frustrated as we were. We had no answers to take away.

Conclusions

Dave, John and I had a meeting post-mortem at MacDonald's. (Dave commented that with the soggy leaves and wet windy weather it was ideal for an interment.)

Although disappointed that there is no quick fix, we were encouraged that BT are genuinely keen to solve our Broadband problems. The Milton Keynes Broadband Action Group, with its 695 members, is making an impact within BT.

Sequel

Serena phoned me after reading the above.

She clearly elucidated that Bradley's tactical business cases would presented to BT's top board. Her business cases had to be as accurate as possible. BT were setting a precedent by interacting with us.

The whole of BT were analysing their procedures and processes for dealing with public lobby groups such as ours.

Links

Follow these links to read the previous BT meeting reports:

June 2003
September 2003
February 2004

Pre-meeting questions
Pre-meeting answers.

Milton Keynes Broadband Home

Activities

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