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11th July 2022, 08:31 | #1 |
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BT/Openreach
Just reading something about Openreach, they own the Telephone exchanges, equipment inside and almost all the cable from the exchanges to our homes.
Clive Sealy the Openreach CEO has said roundabout December 2021 :- Today we have about 5,500 exchanges in the UK. In the future, and particularly beyond 2026, we will only need about a thousand. If it were not for fibre I doubt they could do this. The main problem is where all the phone numbers connect to the cables in the road, the MDF, Main Distribution Frame. Moving one of these is mammoth and has been the reason for not having gotten rid of telephone exchanges in the past. Lots of copper cables to be recovered from the road, lots of equipment from exchanges to sell and lots of real estate to get rid of. For a long time I have wondered, should "BT" set up a new company to convert telephone exchanges into shops, housing, offices etc. There must be money in it as other companies buy BT property and make money on it so why not BT make more money and do it "themselves"? There was talk a few years ago of any office below a London to Bristol imaginary line was to go. No idea what happened. macafee2 |
11th July 2022, 08:47 | #2 |
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A lot of old BT exchanges were converted into office space. Also, a lot of expensive office buildings have been sold off.
The Mayfair exchange being one example that has exchange equipment but some of the floors were converted into offices.
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11th July 2022, 09:39 | #3 | |
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Many of the exchanges will be worth a fortune due to their location, Shepards Bush being one. When I retired I visited some of the Exchanges I had worked in during the 35 years previous, wow how they had changed. No exchange maintenance staff, lots of Strowger Equipment laying idle, stuff I had put in had been removed, facilities no longer used, rooms converted in to equipment areas, equipment removed and new equipment installed. In some places it looked as if people had just upped and left leaving everything in situ. macafee2 |
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11th July 2022, 10:29 | #4 | |
I really should get out more.......
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Getting rid of all those exchanges, lose one could lose a lot of customers. Hope the interconnection/back-up is resilient. |
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11th July 2022, 10:45 | #5 | |
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copper cables will be removed, copper has quite some value. Air was pumped into the cables to prevent water ingress. The change over method is very very good and while some customers do go out of service it is very few. I have been in exchanges where they test "every pair of wires" going to the road, to check what phone number is on it. macafee2 |
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11th July 2022, 11:06 | #6 |
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These days it's not the exchanges but the core routers that carry the largest numbers of subscribers and traffic. I don't think most people could imagine the planning, due-diligence and back-up/recovery and resilience mechanisms that are in place to protect serice.
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