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Announcements => News Articles => Topic started by: Bowdon on January 10, 2019, 03:33:31 PM

Title: Openreach Remove 35ft Poles from Exeter UK Street After Locals Moan
Post by: Bowdon on January 10, 2019, 03:33:31 PM
https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2019/01/openreach-remove-35ft-poles-from-exeter-uk-street-after-locals-moan.html (https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2019/01/openreach-remove-35ft-poles-from-exeter-uk-street-after-locals-moan.html)

Quote
Openreach’s (BT) attempts to bring “full fibre” (FTTP) broadband services to the suburbs of Exeter (Devon) have been met with anger on Armstrong Avenue, where residents complained that the new 35ft telegraph poles are too tall, “ugly” and some also appear to be bent. Thankfully a solution has already been found.

In this case Armstrong Avenue is already quite well served by Fibre-to-the-Cabinet (FTTC / VDSL2) technology and Virgin Media’s ultrafast cable network. Instead Openreach were in the process of rolling out Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) technology to this street as part of their on-going “Fibre First” programme (3 million premises by the end of 2020).

However not everybody is a fan of wooden telegraph poles and if you haven’t had them on your street before then their appearance may not go down well, although equally they are still a fairly common sight in many parts of the United Kingdom (a lot of cables run underground but doing that is often slower, more disruptive and more expensive).

According to DevonLive, locals were less than pleased after the new poles appeared just before Christmas. Apparently the operator notified the council on 11th December and the works began on 15th, taking only five days to complete (Permitted Development Rights). Ward councillor Percy Prowse said: “The contractors told me that the poles they were erecting were too big and excessive considering they [need] to hold one cable.”

Residents will at least be pleased to hear that Openreach has agreed to remove the poles and better yet, the area will still be getting FTTP.

Quote
    A Spokesperson for Openreach said:

    “In those small areas where there isn’t any existing infrastructure, we need to build brand new network, which can include poles. We look at ways of informing residents as early as possible about new infrastructure but retain the overall right to site poles to provide network where necessary.

    We have worked closely with the Highways Agency and the local authority for all other relevant permissions.

    We’ve listened to concerns from residents and Councillors regarding the new poles we recently erected and we absolutely agree that the poles in Armstrong Avenue aren’t in keeping with the local environment and we will remove them as quickly as possible.”
Title: Re: Openreach Remove 35ft Poles from Exeter UK Street After Locals Moan
Post by: kitz on January 11, 2019, 01:20:37 AM
Jeeze and only about 6 months ago Bournemouth residents were bitching about pavement trenching for cable.  ???

Title: Re: Openreach Remove 35ft Poles from Exeter UK Street After Locals Moan
Post by: sevenlayermuddle on January 11, 2019, 09:36:48 AM
May be mistaken, and can’t find any evidence, but I vaguely thought there was a code of practice whereby new developments should have underground cables -  overhead wires only being used in locations where they already existed.

If these poles in Exeter are appearing where there were no poles (neither telephone nor power) before, I may have sympathy with those who complained.
Title: Re: Openreach Remove 35ft Poles from Exeter UK Street After Locals Moan
Post by: kitz on January 11, 2019, 10:04:17 AM
I think there have been several conversations on here in the past about the cost of UG cables and some members have even suggested that they should use overhead cable.

However in this particular case it seems to be a moot point as quote

Quote
Under the new plan Openreach said they intend to pilot a “new” type of Micro Trenching technology that has been developed in Germany.

Theres an MTT video here, but even so this will not be without disruptions that I'm sure someone will complain about. ???
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWryq2nOA3U[/youtube]

This comment amused

Quote from: CarlT
Oh sweet! Wasn’t sure if Openreach were able to use microtrenching for fear of other operators complaining they don’t have enough passive infrastructure to access.

Title: Re: Openreach Remove 35ft Poles from Exeter UK Street After Locals Moan
Post by: sevenlayermuddle on January 11, 2019, 10:25:19 AM
Micro trenching looks cool, but I wonder how deep the trenches are.   In particular, can we be sure the fibres won’t become exposed and damaged when potholes open in the tarmac?  Or get damaged during pothole patchup/repair work?

Time was, I’d have taken the attitude that “They must have thought of that”.   These days, I make no such assumptions about public utility works.  :D
Title: Re: Openreach Remove 35ft Poles from Exeter UK Street After Locals Moan
Post by: broadstairs on January 11, 2019, 10:47:37 AM
Having experienced the disruption here for VM work I do understand people being upset by using underground  cabling. In many ways I am starting to feel that the drive to greater and greater broadband speeds is something quite a significant number of people just do not see the need for. I very much doubt much more than 1% of the domestic population need anything more than 80mbps. What I think should be concentrated on is getting 50+mbps to everyone reliably. Certainly round here there are quite a number of people just do not see the disruption we had as worthwhile.

Stuart
Title: Re: Openreach Remove 35ft Poles from Exeter UK Street After Locals Moan
Post by: Bowdon on January 11, 2019, 11:00:41 AM
There are quite a few poles around my area. My line comes from the pole at the end of the road.

I was thinking, couldn't OR make a deal to possibly use existing lamp posts? Or would that interfere with the fibre signal?
Title: Re: Openreach Remove 35ft Poles from Exeter UK Street After Locals Moan
Post by: j0hn on January 11, 2019, 11:55:52 AM
It would look horrific.
At least most telegraph poles are in back gardens.
I'm not a fan of that idea.

If a few people feel the disturbance of micro trenching isn't worth it then oh well.
You can't please all the people all the time.
Title: Re: Openreach Remove 35ft Poles from Exeter UK Street After Locals Moan
Post by: Bowdon on January 11, 2019, 05:36:02 PM
I was thinking about this story earlier and I'm wondering if part of all the moaning people do is down to a lack of education on full fibre? If people knew the benefits of full fibre, unless they are of a particular social group that doesn't use the Internet, then I can't understand why they are complaining.

If we know that if we had to put up with 3 months of traffic signals and and tailbacks and then you'd be able to order full fibre services then we'd put up with it. The only difference between us and most other people is we understand the value of FTTP/high speed networks.
Title: Re: Openreach Remove 35ft Poles from Exeter UK Street After Locals Moan
Post by: sevenlayermuddle on January 11, 2019, 05:38:57 PM
Having experienced the disruption here for VM work I do understand people being upset by using underground  cabling. In many ways I am starting to feel that the drive to greater and greater broadband speeds is something quite a significant number of people just do not see the need for. I very much doubt much more than 1% of the domestic population need anything more than 80mbps. What I think should be concentrated on is getting 50+mbps to everyone reliably. Certainly round here there are quite a number of people just do not see the disruption we had as worthwhile.

Stuart

Agree with all of that.

We spent the 20th century building bigger and bigger motorways to cope with road traffic demands, until the penny dropped that it was all pointless, as road traffic will simply expand to fill the available road space.      I have no doubt the same applies to broadband. The more bandwidth that becomes available, the more it will be consumed by general ‘bloat’ of the services offered. 

Can you imagine doing your Christmas shopping, or booking a hotel or a flight, using a 28kbps dial up?   That worked well enough in the early noughties, but I doubt it would work well now.

But it’s worse than the roads comparison because at least with road traffic, nearly everybody stood to benefit from a new motorway during the brief honeymoon period, before it filled up.   Even if you lived on a remote Scottish island, you could drive down south for holidays and see some benefit.     With broadband only a lucky few, town and city dwellers, tend to be offered the chance to benefit in any way at all  from each new generation of technology before it is obsoleted.    :(
Title: Re: Openreach Remove 35ft Poles from Exeter UK Street After Locals Moan
Post by: ejs on January 11, 2019, 06:26:05 PM
@Bowdon

Or perhaps there is a fairly large group of people who are not obsessed about their Internet connections and attribute value to other aspects of their lives. I wonder what they think about the people who moan about their Internet connection all the time.

There may be people who have different opinions than you for other reasons than them not knowing something or being an idiot.
Title: Re: Openreach Remove 35ft Poles from Exeter UK Street After Locals Moan
Post by: licquorice on January 11, 2019, 07:27:21 PM
I would wager that 90% of the people that 'must have the fastest speed possible' only ever use 10% of that speed.
Title: Re: Openreach Remove 35ft Poles from Exeter UK Street After Locals Moan
Post by: broadstairs on January 12, 2019, 09:36:42 AM
If we know that if we had to put up with 3 months of traffic signals and and tailbacks and then you'd be able to order full fibre services then we'd put up with it. The only difference between us and most other people is we understand the value of FTTP/high speed networks.

Yes but its not 3 months in our case it is close to 2 years of disruption all over the place, plus a lot of the work actually causes significant other issues like not have acceptable re-instatement, blocked drains and folks who have paid for dropped curbs having their guarantee null & void and now some of the road trenches are starting to fail which will have to be fixed by the Highways and not VM. All this just so a few can boast of 300+mbps which I doubt they will get anywhere near being able to use. Also have to point out that in our case 7 months on from completion of the work we still cannot order a VM connection!

I do understand the benefits of full fibre from a reliability perspective but it is not as simple as that. The significant disruption cause many issues and all this so VM can sell their very expensive TV/Phone/Broadband.

Stuart
Title: Re: Openreach Remove 35ft Poles from Exeter UK Street After Locals Moan
Post by: niemand on January 12, 2019, 11:40:36 AM
I would wager that 90% of the people that 'must have the fastest speed possible' only ever use 10% of that speed.

I would wager that higher speeds mean a lot more burst and 90% of those people use the full performance of their service for brief periods - the faster the service the more brief the period.

We consume 4Mb/s downstream at peak times on Voom 350. Upstream is about 1/4th that. We do, however, have bursts in both directions that can last an hour or two on the downstream and longer on the upstream.

There are games that bring with them over 150 GB+ of downloads to take in 4k textures, some are larger still. There's a fair difference between the 48 MB/s a VM 350 user is able to achieve and the less than 8 MB/s the average 76 Mb/s FTTC user is able to achieve when it comes to downloads of that size.

VM's services are not 'very expensive'. Price wise they're in the same ball park as many other territories taking account of purchasing power parity.

VM have been digging roads in the general area of our city since 2015, however they've not caused disruption to a single area for anywhere near that length of time. You'd have to seek out where they are digging in order to be impacted by it.
Title: Re: Openreach Remove 35ft Poles from Exeter UK Street After Locals Moan
Post by: niemand on January 12, 2019, 11:45:38 AM
With broadband only a lucky few, town and city dwellers, tend to be offered the chance to benefit in any way at all  from each new generation of technology before it is obsoleted.    :(

The vast majority of the population live in towns and cities. Over 90% of us live in areas classed as 'urban'.
Title: Re: Openreach Remove 35ft Poles from Exeter UK Street After Locals Moan
Post by: gt94sss2 on January 12, 2019, 12:30:29 PM
At least most telegraph poles are in back gardens.
I'm not a fan of that idea.

Are you sure? In my experience, telegraph poles tend to on pavement streets..

Ultimately, it all comes down to cost and speed of rollout - telegraph poles are a cheaper way to deploy FTTP in many cases and many already receive telephone services via them.

It's a bit like some areas complaining over the size of DSLAMs and then complaining they didn't get FTTC..
Title: Re: Openreach Remove 35ft Poles from Exeter UK Street After Locals Moan
Post by: sevenlayermuddle on January 12, 2019, 02:42:04 PM
We have several utility poles on our land, both BT and (low voltage) power lines.   The biggest problem is not just that they are unsightly but, thanks to the bird droppings,  they restrict where you can park your car, or sit in your deck chairs. :(

I really can well understand why people would resist, especially if they don’t want or need fttp, and have no other poles or overhead wires.    I’d quite like fttp myself (though no likelihood of getting it)  but given the choice, I’d rather do without fttp and get rid of these poles...
Title: Re: Openreach Remove 35ft Poles from Exeter UK Street After Locals Moan
Post by: Weaver on January 18, 2019, 12:43:27 PM
The thing about needing more than 80 Mbps is surely in part to do with how many active simultaneous users there might be at the site. I could imagine a family or small business with three or four users really thrashing the line simultaneously at certain times, their usage patterns just clashing, and making things awkward for one another.

Some kitizens might be able to report their experiences of usability of applications in just such a situation.
Title: Re: Openreach Remove 35ft Poles from Exeter UK Street After Locals Moan
Post by: d2d4j on January 18, 2019, 02:04:46 PM
Hi

One of our clients have in excess of 30 plus users, 10 plus VPN lan/lan, 20 plus VPN users, 48 voip phones, 16 HD cctv, mobiles on wifi and all working from a central location on BT business fttc running at around 63 down and 18.5 up with spare capacity and no complaints over speed or slow downs

This is a heavy user client for web/email

Many thanks

John
Title: Re: Openreach Remove 35ft Poles from Exeter UK Street After Locals Moan
Post by: j0hn on January 18, 2019, 02:12:22 PM
Every usage case is different.

A single person watching just a 4k stream can easily use more than a family of 4 doing browsing/emails/iPlayer at the same time.

edit: great example from John above.
Title: Re: Openreach Remove 35ft Poles from Exeter UK Street After Locals Moan
Post by: Weaver on January 19, 2019, 01:36:49 AM
As d2d4j shows, business users tend to be low-bandwidth, and very bursty. Clashes, momentary contention, people being active generating traffic at exactly the same time is probably fairly infrequent. Business users aren’t doing Netflix if they’re getting work done, just doing web and email.

I had a customer who had half a dozen users all sharing 7 Mbps ADSL G.992.1 and they were very happy.
Title: Re: Openreach Remove 35ft Poles from Exeter UK Street After Locals Moan
Post by: d2d4j on January 19, 2019, 10:23:51 AM
Hi

@weaver, here are the current usage for that client (as taken directly from router as at 9.46 AM today).  Through the week these throughputs increase as most users are live.

I would consider they are not a low bandwidth client

Many thanks

John


TX rate(Kbps)

3183 / 11951 / Auto

RX rate(Kbps)

16872 / 33080 / Auto

Sessions

3260 / 3369   
 

(Kbps): shared bandwidth
   + : residual bandwidth used
   Current/Peak are average.
Title: Re: Openreach Remove 35ft Poles from Exeter UK Street After Locals Moan
Post by: Weaver on January 19, 2019, 10:47:07 AM
Agreed. I understand now. The client as a whole is obviously busy. There are a lot of users, so small contributions from each are building up that sizeable total. I was thinking about the per-user traffic, and different people might have different ideas about what amounts of data might be called ‘small’ etc. But from my point of view, using my choices of words, we done seem to have one or two users watching 4k TV simultaneously or up/downloading multi-gig files flat out simultaneously all the time, which is not what one would expect anyway. So all is about as you would expect it to be. (It’s a busier site than any of my small customers had when I was working, as a consultant, before I became too ill. But it seems to be the roughly the same kind of thing just scaled up a lot.)
Title: Re: Openreach Remove 35ft Poles from Exeter UK Street After Locals Moan
Post by: d2d4j on January 19, 2019, 11:19:00 AM
Hi

I’m sorry seem to be losing what you were asking

If you want to see the impact of a sub stained 120GB download on a fttc 80/20 line, here is a picture from our SamKnows

Many thanks

John(https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20190119/cd275f56860fa4cafb041a3eca5a3628.jpg)
Title: Re: Openreach Remove 35ft Poles from Exeter UK Street After Locals Moan
Post by: niemand on January 19, 2019, 04:45:06 PM
You can see why we're looking forward to more upload speed - this is with offloading bulk upload to 4G.

(https://i.ibb.co/BLbKrYn/Usage.png) (https://ibb.co/fMfGnTD)

Download is very bursty, upload depends what's going on but is often kinda high.