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The notion of laying optical fibre cable through the sewer network in order to enable the delivery of fast broadband to homes and businesses, 100 Mbps is quoted, seems to me like an excellent one. Typically this is not a British Telecom project who seem to be taking their usual stance of ‘when there is demand then we will do something but, er… we don’t know what but when we do we’ll trial it for five years in a small town in Monmouthshire and then roll it out over the next 10 years to London and Manchester’.
No – this is a company called H20 who reckon they can do it much quicker. Of course, such things will still take many years to get to smaller towns and more rural areas but it’s a step in the right direction.
But here is my question. Elfed Thomas, the man behind H20 said:
Deploying traditional fibre over a two-kilometre area would be six to 12 months. We can do it in four hours
Impressive. But if they can cable up a two-kilometre area in four hours why do they then say:
Roll-out in the chosen town will begin in September and take 18 months to complete.
Or am I missing something?
Oh no he didn’t say it, the BBC reported him as saying it, whatever he said I’m sure the Beeb have ‘edited it’, possibly from different days !!!!!!
Sorry to soooo cynical, I’m listening to Jezzer Vine on the Beeb discussing the story of the two twins who married, which turns out to be "well he said, so I said, so I printed" – garbage – the media is suitable for movies and music, any else is probably fiction.
Well, we’ll assume that by ‘two kilometre area’ – a totally meaningless term on a par with "a three-litre length" – he actually meant ‘two square kilometres’. And by ‘four hours’ we should probably allow a working day, on the grounds that the workers have to drive to the location they’re cabling, get all their stuff out the van, pack up at the end of the day and fit sixteen cups of tea each in the intervening hours as well. And realistically we should double that, because no-one can perform work at peak rate over the course of several months continuously, the rate will drop after they get settled in.
Now, Northampton (for instance) looks from the map to be about 50-60 square kilometres, so that’s 50-60 working days. Of course, there are only (on average) 4 working days in the week, after one takes into account bank holidays and nominated holiday time and illness and strikes and so on, so that ends up being 12-16 weeks. Which is nearly four whole months, if you look at it sideways and squint a bit.
So that leaves them only 14 months to secure the requisite permissions from the local council. Which is a pretty tight schedule, really.
You’re both more cynical than me!
I am surprised the beeb didn’t convert the ‘two kilometre area’ in something more meaningful, like 3,5 football grounds or 6 times the distance you can run in an hour with your trousers down.
But seriously, I think Jake forgot about diversity, the workmen will need a few packets of Digestives to go with the Tea and some will want Coffee and Bourbons.
Last time I saw an article the BBC had tried to convert units on it had statements in it like "… with a force of 40 pounds (about 20 kilos)"… it was really quite depressing.
It’s like Sir Isaac never sat under an apple tree…..