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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
by 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 agoNot 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 agoThe 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 agoYou 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 agoI 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.