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And some are using telegraph poles, or trying to, and to run from those into
houses. I hadn’t noticed the poles in our street until I chatted about this at
an event somewhere. It’s like some sinister Dr Who episode, where the aliens
have been in plain sight all the time...
Tim
On 19 Jun 2023, at 11:03, Jethro Binks <[email protected]> wrote:
I had a few direct and on-list replies pointing me to this product (Simon's was
the most comprehensive), and it makes more sense now. (It vaguely rings a bell
now, I guess I have seen something of it before).
I've always found it professionally interesting to see what's going on in the
streets for real; while we are a University with our own dark fibre network on
campus, we do from time to time have to deal with suppliers who bring in
circuits to more remote places and it is always interesting to get a bit of
insight into their world, chatting with the engineers. And watching the
installation to my own house was interesting too.
(I wonder in which century Virgin expect to recoup their costs for doing their
own dig in this area ...)
I guess the top and bottom is, that it's an economic and practical decision
based on various factors as to whether telcos use PIA for deployments or dig
their own, and that could be very situation dependent. Being newer
well-provisioned OR ducts in our area, it makes sense for CF to deploy into
them directly. They were done in a few hours, where as the street digging in
older areas of the towns goes on and on and on ... 🙂
Oh when I said "he was looking for the T-node which wasn't in the place
documented so had to pop a few lids." -- I did not adequately reflect the
choice language he had about the deployment team not following the direction of
the planners, but then worse, not reporting back the actuality of what had been
installed. It was very colourful.
Jethro.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Jethro R Binks, Network Manager,
Information Services Directorate, University Of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK
The University of Strathclyde is a charitable body, registered in Scotland,
number SC015263.
________________________________
From: Simon Lockhart <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>
Sent: 19 June 2023 10:44
To: Jethro Binks <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>
Cc: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>
Subject: Re: [uknof] I want fibre!!!
On Mon Jun 19, 2023 at 09:28:10AM +0000, Jethro Binks wrote:
> I went a walkaround for work purposes with an OR engineer a while back in the
> city centre, he was looking for the T-node which wasn't in the place
> documented so had to pop a few lids. Every time there were other provider
> fibres in there, and he tutted and grumbled that while everyone else was
> "allowed to use" OR ducts, they were not permitted to use anyone else's.
> This seemed a little odd to me at the time, since if everyone could use OR
> ducts generally, there surely wouldn't be the need for so much digging. So
> perhaps this grant is only in certain areas, like city centres.
What you describe is PIA (Passive Infrastructure Access) which is a product
from Openreach. Openreach don't like providing this, but are required to do so
under regulation (originally the requirement came from the EU).
It's available to any service provider throughout the UK. The idea is that the
ducts were installed using government money (from when BT was publicly owned),
and thus should be made available. In the same way that govermnet funded builds
by altnets (Gigabit Britain procrements, etc) have a clause in the contract
which says that you have to make your infrastructure available to others. (So,
actually BT/Openreach could use ducts installed by others, but they choose not
to).
PIA isn't a magic answer though - many of the BT/Openreach ducts are in a poor
state of repair, or are congested. As a result altnets do use PIA quite
extensively, but it doesn't stop them having to dig the roads up.
Simon
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