5 ms·

42% fewer employees, 7 years in the future? Including hopes for things like this: "Jansen also said that around 10,000 fewer people would be needed to service

by tyingq 3y ago

42% fewer employees, 7 years in the future? Including hopes for things like this: "Jansen also said that around 10,000 fewer people would be needed to service and repair digital networks, which “go wrong less often” and can be fixed more easily than older networks." That feels optimistic. Modernization does help with that sort of thing in some ways. But it also often adds complexity, higher dependency counts, etc.

Hoasi 3y ago
> That feels optimistic. Sure, but nobody will remember someone said that seven years before. They might be hiring by that point, too.
BurningFrog 3y ago
I assume they've already converted part of the network, and this is empirical data. But I'm with you in the sense that new technology that does more than what they replaced will absolutely be added and need fresh workforces.
- rjsw 3y ago
  They have already converted some areas. The town where I grew up is all Openreach fibre now, phone is VoIP.
onion2k 3y ago
Modernization does help with that sort of thing in some ways. But it also often adds complexity, higher dependency counts, etc. The complexity is inside opaque boxes that BT deploys though. Rather than fixing things like they did in the past, sitting at the end of a street patching cables in a roadside cabinet, BT's engineers of the future will just unclip a box that's returning an error code and plug in a new one. Or someone in a NOC will reset it from 300 miles away. Maybe some AI will do that. Or a cron job. With fibre networks once the cabinet is installed and plugged into the network there's very little physical work to do. That's what engineers do now - manually splicing and connecting copper wire. That's the work that's going away.
- 908B64B197 3y ago
  Not only that, but it's cheaper and easier now to monitor these boxes via software. So you don't need phone operators to wait for calls about interrupted service, the software will just detect some unreachable part of the network and dispatch a team to investigate.
- benjaminwootton 3y ago
  The technology was improving even on the copper stuff. The last time my broadband went down, I clicked a button in the app and they acknowledged a fault. An engineer came out the next day, plugged his iPad in and could see that there was a break in the cable approximately 16 metres away. And it turned out to be correct. To say it’s all based on copper cables, it was pretty impressive.
  - madaxe_again 3y ago
    You could do that 20 years ago by calling the lineman’s number and choosing the relevant function - it’s all on tablets now, I’m sure, but around 2000 it was all done using a phone call and a robotic voice, and there were engineer pins floating around on the internet.
- wil421 3y ago
  I work in this space at an American telco and you are correct. The only thing I haven’t seen is AI doing it. However there are AI/ML features built into the monitor tools we use.
blibble 3y ago
it's passive fibre replacing copper placed in the ground 80 years ago it's going to be more reliable even if they completely screw everything up
- tyingq 3y ago
  In isolation that makes sense. But other things are happening too. New equipment that does more, new services, customer growth, and so on.
Lio 3y ago
I can see some of this being true. A copper line isn't a continuous thing from the exchange to the customer. It's made of a number of sections that are joined together. Now someone who once worked for a large British telecoms company once told me that they'd done some modelling, maybe using something like system dynamics if I was guessing, to gauge the effect of work on the network. Any interaction with the equipment, whether to set up lines for a customer or even fix faults leads to more faults. So it ends up being more profitable to just leave equipment in place than to reuse it. Based on that I would say that having all the pairs terminating at the cab instead of the exchange and using remotely configurable equipment would be a greater improvement again. Just guessing you understand, I have no inside knowledge. ;)
- ta1243 3y ago
  My team is responsible for many services running over openreach and other BT point to point fibres, both local connections like EADs, and longer distance stuff. My company has thousands. The number of RFOs I see which report outages due to either fibre disturbances in an exchange or is phenomenal. I don't really have any idea how that compares with copper, but my home DSL runs over copper to the exchange and doesn't go down anywhere near as much.
gumballindie 3y ago
> which “go wrong less often” and can be fixed more easily than older networks. What they mean is that consumers will be stuck with slow internet connections. As a result of customers switching to other providers they’ll have less equipment breaking down. Since you know it’s no longer in use.
- yanellena 3y ago
  The BT group run Openreach who most other UK ISPs will resell as their own connection. Customers switching to other providers won't harm them as much as you'd think.
  - gumballindie 3y ago
    Hm. I see, so we are captive.

by tyingq 3y ago

Hoasi 3y ago

> That feels optimistic. Sure, but nobody will remember someone said that seven years before. They might be hiring by that point, too.

BurningFrog 3y ago

I assume they've already converted part of the network, and this is empirical data. But I'm with you in the sense that new technology that does more than what they replaced will absolutely be added and need fresh workforces.

rjsw 3y ago
They have already converted some areas. The town where I grew up is all Openreach fibre now, phone is VoIP.

onion2k 3y ago

Modernization does help with that sort of thing in some ways. But it also often adds complexity, higher dependency counts, etc. The complexity is inside opaque boxes that BT deploys though. Rather than fixing things like they did in the past, sitting at the end of a street patching cables in a roadside cabinet, BT's engineers of the future will just unclip a box that's returning an error code and plug in a new one. Or someone in a NOC will reset it from 300 miles away. Maybe some AI will do that. Or a cron job. With fibre networks once the cabinet is installed and plugged into the network there's very little physical work to do. That's what engineers do now - manually splicing and connecting copper wire. That's the work that's going away.

908B64B197 3y ago
Not only that, but it's cheaper and easier now to monitor these boxes via software. So you don't need phone operators to wait for calls about interrupted service, the software will just detect some unreachable part of the network and dispatch a team to investigate.
benjaminwootton 3y ago
The technology was improving even on the copper stuff. The last time my broadband went down, I clicked a button in the app and they acknowledged a fault. An engineer came out the next day, plugged his iPad in and could see that there was a break in the cable approximately 16 metres away. And it turned out to be correct. To say it’s all based on copper cables, it was pretty impressive.
- madaxe_again 3y ago
  You could do that 20 years ago by calling the lineman’s number and choosing the relevant function - it’s all on tablets now, I’m sure, but around 2000 it was all done using a phone call and a robotic voice, and there were engineer pins floating around on the internet.
wil421 3y ago
I work in this space at an American telco and you are correct. The only thing I haven’t seen is AI doing it. However there are AI/ML features built into the monitor tools we use.

blibble 3y ago

it's passive fibre replacing copper placed in the ground 80 years ago it's going to be more reliable even if they completely screw everything up

tyingq 3y ago
In isolation that makes sense. But other things are happening too. New equipment that does more, new services, customer growth, and so on.

Lio 3y ago

I can see some of this being true. A copper line isn't a continuous thing from the exchange to the customer. It's made of a number of sections that are joined together. Now someone who once worked for a large British telecoms company once told me that they'd done some modelling, maybe using something like system dynamics if I was guessing, to gauge the effect of work on the network. Any interaction with the equipment, whether to set up lines for a customer or even fix faults leads to more faults. So it ends up being more profitable to just leave equipment in place than to reuse it. Based on that I would say that having all the pairs terminating at the cab instead of the exchange and using remotely configurable equipment would be a greater improvement again. Just guessing you understand, I have no inside knowledge. ;)

ta1243 3y ago
My team is responsible for many services running over openreach and other BT point to point fibres, both local connections like EADs, and longer distance stuff. My company has thousands. The number of RFOs I see which report outages due to either fibre disturbances in an exchange or is phenomenal. I don't really have any idea how that compares with copper, but my home DSL runs over copper to the exchange and doesn't go down anywhere near as much.

gumballindie 3y ago

> which “go wrong less often” and can be fixed more easily than older networks. What they mean is that consumers will be stuck with slow internet connections. As a result of customers switching to other providers they’ll have less equipment breaking down. Since you know it’s no longer in use.

yanellena 3y ago
The BT group run Openreach who most other UK ISPs will resell as their own connection. Customers switching to other providers won't harm them as much as you'd think.
- gumballindie 3y ago
  Hm. I see, so we are captive.