16-08-2012, 09:39 PM
Sounds about right Niall. BT pioneered fibre technology but never implemented it on the same scale as companies like United Artists, Cablecom, NTL etc. Bear in mind Virgin as a media brand has only been around for a few years, before that it was private companies leasing the network for TV only, followed by relatively shit broadband and phone. Now everyone's realised the possibilities on a public scale and there's just not enough to go around!
Virgin got there first though and BT will have some catching up to do. We have a contract with Motorola to develop our fibre equipment at the headends and it's constantly being upgraded and replaced. Back in the analogue days there were rooms upon rooms of networking cards, amps, cooling towers and stuff, now it's been shrunk down to about 5% of the size. No idea how big BT tower is compared to one of our national headends at Knowsley or Bromley but it's probably impressive, i've only ever been allowed in the regional headend where I work and it was under strict supervision, one yellow fibre cable the size of a headphone lead could take out an entire town if pulled out!
Virgin got there first though and BT will have some catching up to do. We have a contract with Motorola to develop our fibre equipment at the headends and it's constantly being upgraded and replaced. Back in the analogue days there were rooms upon rooms of networking cards, amps, cooling towers and stuff, now it's been shrunk down to about 5% of the size. No idea how big BT tower is compared to one of our national headends at Knowsley or Bromley but it's probably impressive, i've only ever been allowed in the regional headend where I work and it was under strict supervision, one yellow fibre cable the size of a headphone lead could take out an entire town if pulled out!
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