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BT Tower is to be turned into a hotel
- timthorn 3y agoNot mentioned is the fact that the BT Tower was designed to be a node in the microwave backbone network. There are landmark towers across the country, though no others are also restaurants: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Telecom_microwave_network https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Telecom_microwave_netw...
- tallanvor 3y ago"For example, the Tower’s microwave aerials were removed more than a decade ago, as they were no longer needed to carry telecommunications traffic from London to the rest of the country." It might not go into details, but it does mention it.
- jonatron 3y agoTo me it's surprising they didn't keep them for backup / resiliency. There's a lot of rats and mice in London, and they can and do chew through fibre.
- mhh__ 3y agoWe don't do backup or resiliency anymore in search of "value for money"
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- tetris11 3y agoCheaper to replace fiber during the day when most of the customers are out, than to hire a rare specialized technician to maintain it maybe
- poooogles 3y agoFrom memory at the time there was corrosion on the fixings and it would've been exceedingly expensive to repair/replace.
- rsynnott 3y agoMaintaining redundant fibre links (which exist) would likely be cheaper than maintaining a decades-old microwave system (I would wonder if they even have the appropriate spectrum licenses anymore, anyway).
- rjmunro 3y agoI think it's just that the bandwidth of the microwaves is not much by today's standards. It was capable of 150,000 simultaneous telephone calls, which is something like 10Gbs. It may be that modern numbers were higher, but possibly not much as you have to share the microwave spectrum with other uses. In a fibre you get the whole optical spectrum to yourself, so you can achieve much higher speeds. You can also run many fibres in the same ducting and increase bandwidth that way. For backup / resiliency you just run more fibres via different routes.
- mickeyp 3y agoFitzrovia is laced with fibre; the entire area is/was host to a large number of broadcast service providers, media companies, telcos, etc. Running out of fibre is not likely in that part of London.
- twic 3y agoI wonder how many of them were originally set up there because of proximity to the tower and its communications links. Other than that, isn't Fitzrovia basically UCL and early 20th century novelists? Although I suppose there is Broadcasting House over on the other side.
- AniseAbyss 3y ago[dead]
- NikkiA 3y agoMost of them were along the ECML and WCML, you could see them in several spots from a train ride. They were not big enough to contain a restaurant, just two big dishes on top of a pole, on top of a hill.
- sgt101 3y agoRevolving restaurants! It's a fantastic place to eat, the sad thing has been that BT just couldn't exploit the value of it in terms of corporate entertainment. I think it'll be lovely for people to be able to have a meal up there.
- yesod 3y agoI've not plotted it myself, but I'm told that if you plot the links to other main microwave nodes, and then look at embassies from foreign nations....
- schoen 3y agoDid HM government allow the foreign nations to choose the individual locations of their embassies?
- heads 3y agoI feel like my memory (and that article) aren’t very clear on this, but Backbone in spirit felt quite different to the series of high bandwidth towers of which Telecom Tower was one part. Regular lets-call-grandma telecommunications would be handled by your well know, friendly, cuddly round towers like Telecom Tower and Stokenchurch just next to the Chiltern cutting on the M40. Sinister everyone-has-died communications would be handled by the mysterious, dangerous looking towers like Highgate and Kelvedon Hatch. These towers resemble high tension power lines and growl at you if you look at them for too long. This site has a lot more detail on how the two ended up as one, over the years: https://www.subbrit.org.uk/features/backbone-microwave-relay-network/ https://www.subbrit.org.uk/features/backbone-microwave-relay...
- ilikerashers 3y agoLots of odd changes going on in cities right now. Offices being converted to hotels and flats in an attempt to return to profitability. Retail spaces are being turned into "experiences" with climbing walls, gyms and golf ranges taking over. Upside is our office rent is now super cheap but I don't know who's footing the bill for all that property. I also doubt the climbing walls are as profitable per-square-foot.
- rsynnott 3y ago> right now. Total retail space in many countries (notably in the US, but elsewhere, too) has been ramping down for a decade or so. Frankly there's far too much of it.
- DebtDeflation 3y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retail_apocalypse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retail_apocalypse
- glimshe 3y agoConsidering the Internet, it is too much. But a lot of the real estate we see today was built or approved before, well, Amazon became what it is.
- rsynnott 3y agoOh, sure, but that's just how things go. Things change, certain facilities become useless and are either demolished or repurposed. Practically every coastal city in the world has or had some sort of redundant pre-containerisation port facility, say; often it will have been demolished and built on in the 80s or 90s (after containerisation, ports got _way_ smaller).
- baq 3y ago> I don't know who's footing the bill for all that property. The landlord, for now, until debt matures. Then, the banks^Wtaxpayer.
- 3y ago
- TruthWillHurt 3y agoIt sometimes feels like London is a theme-park designed to separate people from their money and entertain the Plebs workforce. This (and the giant Ferris wheel) certainly don't help.
- simonbarker87 3y agoSounds better than a city full of shops designed to separate people from their money buying stuff they don’t need. Life is about building memories, connecting with people and sharing experiences. Having a variety of places to do that (update: including shops) is nice in my opinion.
- Xophmeister 3y ago> Sounds better than a city full of shops designed to separate people from their money buying stuff they don’t need. London has plenty of those.
- bemusedthrow75 3y ago> London has plenty of those. If you want American candy, sure. (To American HNers: this isn't a joke about you. Or even really that much of a joke, alas)
- andybak 3y agohttps://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jul/04/us-sweet-shops-rip-off-customers-business-rates-owners https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jul/04/us-swe...
- rsynnott 3y agoWe have these in Ireland, too. Always vaguely assumed they were a money laundering thing; never anyone in them, really.
- dmazin 3y agoThis could be a cultural loss. Aren’t some floors essentially museums, with much older equipment intact?
- snoutie 3y agoIt would be a shame if they closed the access to the pool of equipment to the public. But then again I would guess that a museum inside a hotel is not contradictory.
- niklasrde 3y agoThere's general public access to somewhere in the BT Tower? Do you have more info on that?
- chedabob 3y agoIt opens once a year to the public. This is from last year https://www.ianvisits.co.uk/articles/tickets-alert-tours-of-the-bt-tower-taking-place-next-month-65072/ https://www.ianvisits.co.uk/articles/tickets-alert-tours-of-...
- danjc 3y agoWhere's Tom Scott when you need him :)
- autoexec 3y agoTaking a much earned break. I'm hoping he'll be back soon with the odd video now and then, but I can't fault him for stepping back after all this time and enjoying all that youtube money
- dukeyukey 3y agoIt was built in the 60s. Hell, my dad was alive when it was built. That's hardly historic!
- 3y ago
- seanhunter 3y agoReally fun fact about that building. When it was built it was a “list X” facility for UK national security which meant that although it was a massive building in the middle of Fitzrovia and visible virtually anywhere in London, it didn’t appear on maps and the government would officially deny its existence.
- devnullbrain 3y agoRough, try getting directions to your hotel and nobody can tell you.
- Nursie 3y agoYeah, I remember watching a documentary on it about 10 or so years ago, and even then they said it wasn’t signposted from anywhere and it was weirdly hard to find at street level.
- vidarh 3y agoIt's not hard to find at street level, but the base is a fairly non-descript office building, so you might walk around it before it becomes obvious. There are signs. Mostly to tell you there is no access for the public.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- m-i-l 3y agoAnother fun fact - it had a rotating restaurant on the 34th floor called The Top of the Tower, which was operated by Butlins, and made one revolution every 23 minutes, but was closed in 1971 following a bombing[0]. Apparently there was talk of reopening the restaurant for the London Olympics in 2012 (not clear whether it would have rotated or not) but this didn't happen. Will be interesting to see if the hotel gets the rotating restaurant working again after all this time. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BT_Tower https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BT_Tower
- 3y ago
- tremarley 3y agoThe BT Tower is also known as the Post Office Tower. It used to be the tallest building in London. The reason it’s round is so that it would withstand a nuclear attack blast wave, if London was ever attacked.
- londons_explore 3y ago> would withstand a nuclear attack blast wave, I can't imagine round vs square makes more than a marginal impact on shock wave resistance...
- eep_social 3y agoIf quora [1] is to be believed, your imagination has failed you by a drag factor of 50%. [1] https://www.quora.com/Do-curved-surfaces-have-an-aerodynamic-advantage-over-flat-surfaces https://www.quora.com/Do-curved-surfaces-have-an-aerodynamic...
- heavenlyblue 3y agoAnd it has a rotating restaurant such that it would generate electricity due to the wind caused by the nuclear blast due to Magnus effect. /s
- notso411 3y ago[dead]
- throwawayben 3y agohttps://360gigapixels.com/london-320-gigapixel-panorama/ https://360gigapixels.com/london-320-gigapixel-panorama/ Reminded me of this super high resolution panorama photo from it. I think it was a quite impressive achievement at the time (2012)
- InCityDreams 3y agoI always heard it closed due to the threat of terrorism...
- ceejayoz 3y agoThe 1971 closure was due to a bomb, yes. http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/october/31/newsid_2464000/2464143.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/october/31/...
- zeristor 3y agoLook at Life - Eating high, 1966 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMPXmnK8G8E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMPXmnK8G8E British Pathé - Top Of The Tower Aka GPO Tower (1967) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bi2_3gljm4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bi2_3gljm4 A breath taking view of the Horizon. Spin in the restaurant as the Postmaster general spins in his grave at what the Post Office has become.
- malux85 3y agoThats really funny, the British going to all that effort to make a fancy restaurant in the sky, and then getting dressed up in a suit and looking sharp, and then sitting down to ... a big plate of chips. I miss London!
- ralmidani 3y agoGlad to see there’s still some common sense on that side of the pond. Meanwhile, in Dearborn, Michigan they decided to tear down a 670,000 Sq. Ft. office building which was previously used by Ford. https://www.detroitnews.com/story/business/2023/11/16/former-ford-office-building-in-dearborn-being-torn-down/71606246007/ https://www.detroitnews.com/story/business/2023/11/16/former... Just like that. American-style Capitalism is nauseatingly profligate and wasteful.
- ggm 3y agoI ate in that tower, before the Goodies kitten destroyed it. And, watched Concorde flying over london the same holiday.