Fibre Infrastructure Technical Discussion

[Andy AWS]

I am an ex employee for virgin media.
I worked on the virgin/bt network for just over 3 years before being made redundant.
I live in corby and have a workshop on the kingsmead estate, at my home is corby I have a fttp connection on behalf of virgin when I worked for them, I had a connection of just over 400mbps on a good day, and that's with a multimode fibre core to the cabinet.

This gigaclear service seems viable, all they would have to do is buy a few ducts from bt (the company who own the ducts laid down last year which run from Peterborough through to corby going via the few villages).
They will most likely need a few street cabinets to mount the nodes, maybe a few pits in the streets to be built to house the optical manifolds if street cabinets aren't an option.
The problem with getting planning permission to build street cabs is the local council (east northants) can sometimes decline the planning.
The optical exchange will most likely need to be installed in a building that has air conditioning.
They wont be able to use the current bt exchange which is on the way to apethorpe as you wont even be able to swing a cat in the place at present.
I have seen optical server rooms for virgin inside converted council garages and factories.

Lets talk a bit about optical service for data and voice.

Optical for data works by sending signals through a light converter (sometimes known as an optical media converter), the data is sent via Ethernet and converted to optical which then runs underground to your home or office, then it gets converted back to Ethernet.
Basically the Ethernet port on the optical converter box is your internet connection.
Optical for voice works in exactly the same way with the exception that instead of data coming out of the Ethernet port, you would get an A line and a B line analogue telephone signal.
The router that would be used is a combined voice and data receiver with built in router.

The optical line would probably be multicore, i.e one for data one for voice.

Now for the depressing part.

Although companies like virgin media say high speed broadband, fibre broadband, ultra fast.
This is not always the case, virgin media uses BT as their main network infrastructure to connect devices like your modem or router via a coaxial cable which is called hfc (hybrid fibre over coax)

Unless of course there happens to be a railway that runs through the town/city then the optical lines would run alongside the railway, basically because they cannot get vandalised plus they don't have to dig up cables.

So the short story of the above is that bt own the national network infrastructure, everything we use comes from bt, Mobile phone masts in cities will either use the bt network or they will use the virgin network via bt.

The ideal place for an optical server in kings cliffe would be situated near to where the current ducts run, which in my case would be on station road off wood street.

I hope the above info is useful and does not bore most people reading it.

Andrew Watson
Aws network services
Ex Virgin, Ex Bt Network access engineer.

[Russell Brown]

Thanks for the interesting insight Andrew; but things have probably changed a bit since your involvement with fibre deployment.

Fortunately there isn't any need for an air-conditioned optical exchange building or complex structures; the interconnections will be done through two cabinets in the village. If you look at the existing Gigaclear installations you'll see what I mean.

There also isn't any analogue signal involved in the network until you get to the actual telephone handset. It's all VOIP digital that runs over the fibre. Voice is merely another form of data.

So it's all become a lot more simple to install fibre networks in a village - which is why we're getting the opportunity

[Andy AWS]

Although the voice is another form of data it is still analogue when it reaches our property, unless Ofcom get rid of the old analogue telephones and give us all voip base stations which may not be for the next 300 years, every public exchange works excactly like a pbx, the subs on the pbx are treated as customers and billed accordingly.

do we have any gigaclear sites in our area?
I know there is something similar in little stanion just outside of corby with voice and data combined into the same signal.
only problem is the host can have total control over the telephone line and data line.
it works the same way as adsl except its a lot faster.
I have been to some bt and virgin sites where they have at least 6 air con units running inside a unit no bigger than 1000sqft, its like a sauna on a bad day.
even on the sites which I work on nowadays, the server rooms are circa 23 degress with air con.

Your average street cabinet filled with Telco equipment can generate a heat build up of at least 35 degress with no fans on a cold day.

[Russell Brown]

Although the voice is another form of data it is still analogue when it reaches our property, unless Ofcom get rid of the old analogue telephones and give us all voip base stations which may not be for the next 300 years

No it's not analogue to our property. It's VOIP digital all the way over the Internet to the telephone inside our property. The clue's in the name - Voice Over Internet Protocol.

With the product Vonage supply, there is a small VOIP to old-fashioned-analogue-phone convertor that connects to the router inside the property.

These boxes talk SIP to a remote computer that can trunk calls over the internet to other computers and terminate the call at another SIP device (phone or similar) or break out onto the PSTN if needed.

The vast majority of VOIP users don't use what you'd call analogue phones at all; they're SIP devices (computers) some of which happen to look like a telephone.

The only analogue bit is between your microphone/earpiece and the SIP device and, possibly, on the PSTN end at the other end of the call.

Every day I talk to people without any part of the call (the bit from my ear to the phone handset excepted) being analogue. It's all SIP to SIP over a pure data network. I also build, configure and program modern SIP based systems (what you'd call a PBX) as part of my business so I do have some idea about modern telephony. FWIW I started my apprenticeship in a telephone exchange servicing Strowger UIniselectors so I've seen it from both ends.

Have a read up on SIP and it's associated protocols. As you seem very interested in telephony I'm sure you'd find it fascinating.

I'd also have a bet that what you're calling an analogue phone (analogue connection from the exchange or PBX) will have died out long before 300 years have passed. I'd guess a tenth of that would be a gross overestimate.

Lets meet up in 2044 to resolve the bet - loser buys the winner a pint