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Destruction / Rebuilding of Telephone Exchange |
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#1 |
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Forum Member
Join Date: Jul 2003
Location: Essex
Posts: 3,858
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Destruction / Rebuilding of Telephone Exchange
A bit OT perhaps, but I know not of a forum where it would be On Topic!
My local exchange (Epping) is a pretty big building for the size of town it serves. It has two floors each being about 17m x 65m in dimensions, which does seem somewhat excessive considering there are only just over 6000 lines in use (Some cold war usage previously perhaps?) We have a fairly controversial 'consultation' going on at the moment as an adjoining old school site & council depot is earmarked for redevelopment. Reading the document, in three of the four 'options' (including in the councils one real option, which is to build a huge new supermarket) the telephone exchange is replaced with a much smaller building. I don't know if BT has been involved with this plan, or whether the council is considering compulsory purchase. Does anyone know of a similar example where a perfectly good telephone exchange has been demolished and downsized to sell land off for building 'luxury flats'? Is this even possible without significant disruption to services? What are the stages involved? Considering there is LLU equipment and they are currently putting in FTTC, it's certainly not going to be a simple job.... |
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#2 |
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Forum Member
Join Date: Feb 2004
Location: London
Posts: 7,513
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Many exchange buildings have become Luxury flats or business premises as electronic exchanges are smaller than the Strowger / Cross bar exchanges.
If you assume that within a building there is no (great) break in service when they upgrade - then cutting over to a new building is not really that much different .... just a few more stages One way is to keep the main cables where they are and just extend them to the new building so that there is a small building large manhole left on the existing site - or you just re route the old cables into the new building and using temporary ends carry them on into the old building.... It is more or less business as usual for BT ..... |
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#3 |
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Forum Member
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Hampshire, England
Posts: 7,172
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Quote:
My local exchange (Epping) is a pretty big building for the size of town it serves. It has two floors each being about 17m x 65m in dimensions, which does seem somewhat excessive considering there are only just over 6000 lines in use (Some cold war usage previously perhaps?)
The reason for their size is two-fold. First they used to contain racks and rack of electromechanical Strowger equipment. Just one Strowger selector takes up enough room for umpteen modern routing circuits and one needed several selectors to route a call. The racks that contain the telephone wires are a comparatively small part of one of these 1930s exchanges. In addition ALL telephone exchanges used to contain operators. Since the late 1970s, the operators have all been moved out to central exchanges and so most of an actual exchange is now a so-called called dark exchange. No humans - no need for lights, or anything else that we need to sustain life: canteen, loos, etc. So there you have it: smaller kit and no operators equals a vast underused space. |
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#4 |
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Join Date: Apr 2011
Posts: 10,731
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i'd imagine every exchange will have disaster recovery plans upto and including the building getting flattened so if they can probably reroute everything from a demolished exchange to another exchange in a few days then a planned move of the infrastructure will probably be quite easy with maybe a few cut offs at like 2-3am when they need to actually reroute the physical cables to their new home
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#5 |
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Join Date: Jan 2004
Location: Lancs
Posts: 7,928
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There have been discussions on here about "Fibre to the Cabinet" (FTTC) and the situation for people like me who are connected directly to the exchange and not through a street cabinet. If I understand the situation correctly, people like me will never have more than 20Mb connections as "there is no room in the exchanges for the equipment installed in the cabinets".
I'm sure the modern exchange equipment is much smaller than the old Strowger equipment, so what is the space issue for the FTTC equipment? Or is this driven by BT bean counters wanting to sell off assets? |
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#6 |
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Forum Member
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Hampshire, England
Posts: 7,172
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"there is no room in the exchanges for the equipment installed in the cabinets".
I can't imagine that a VDSL DSLAM is bigger than an ADSL DSLAM (It may need more cooling however.) and so I do not see why they should not, in time, be installed in the existing exchanges in the place of redundant (due to FTTC take-up) ADSL DSLAMs. I suspect that BT are just taking the low hanging fruit first. |
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#7 |
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Forum Member
Join Date: Jan 2004
Location: Lancs
Posts: 7,928
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Quote:
Is that quote "official", that is to say from BT?
I can't imagine that a VDSL DSLAM is bigger than an ADSL DSLAM (It may need more cooling however.) and so I do not see why they should not, in time, be installed in the existing exchanges in the place of redundant (due to FTTC take-up) ADSL DSLAMs. I suspect that BT are just taking the low hanging fruit first. In my case, the exchange is about 750 metres from my house (assuming the cables follow the most direct route). I don't know if that distance would allow a 40Mb connection, 30 or 35 would be adequate for me. At present I usually get 20Mb download but a maximum 0.95Mb upload. If I wanted more, Virgin cable is available in my street and I have used them in the past. |
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#8 |
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Forum Member
Join Date: Feb 2005
Posts: 377
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Quote:
i'd imagine every exchange will have disaster recovery plans upto and including the building getting flattened so if they can probably reroute everything from a demolished exchange to another exchange in a few days then a planned move of the infrastructure will probably be quite easy with maybe a few cut offs at like 2-3am when they need to actually reroute the physical cables to their new home
Brian |
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#9 |
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Join Date: Sep 2008
Posts: 62
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Mobile exchanges (in trailers) and mobile generators are available for disaster recovery situations such as fire (e.g. at Musselburgh some years ago due to an arsonist). It's not uncommon to see a mobile genny brought in if the standby genny has a fault or needs maintenance.
There has been a building clearance program in central London (and probably other places with high land values) to reduce the number of exchanges and consolidate apparatus in the remaining ones. Wood Street was replaced by a processor buried in a hole in the road, with enough redundant capacity on it to hopefully last its lifetime. Marylebone (in Welbeck St) has had the top floors turned into yuppy flats. Fleet building was vacated entirely and part of Faraday (in Queen Victoria St) has been sold to the Scientologists, with a new BT entrance created in Knightrider Street. |
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#10 |
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Forum Member
Join Date: Oct 2001
Posts: 26,378
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Quote:
Or is this driven by BT bean counters wanting to sell off assets?
http://www.btplc.com/report/financial_fixedassets.shtml BT sold off and leased back most of their buildings back in 2001. |
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#11 |
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Forum Member
Join Date: Jul 2000
Posts: 4,807
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Quote:
Since the late 1970s, the operators have all been moved out to central exchanges and so most of an actual exchange is now a so-called called dark exchange. No humans - no need for lights, or anything else that we need to sustain life: canteen, loos, etc.
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#12 |
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Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Hampshire, England
Posts: 7,172
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That's not true, all exchanges have toilets in and rooms for Openreach engineers to have their lunch. Dont forget Openreach field engineers often have to go into the exchanges as part of their jobs. There are Openreach frames engineers too, they aren't based in one particular exchange, but they have 10 or so exchanges they work in.
In the days of "proper" computers, I often worked in dark machine rooms. We put the lights on (and the Halon off!) on entry and switched them off again on exit. The bulk of the time they were dark. |
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#13 |
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Join Date: Jul 2000
Posts: 4,807
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Quote:
I am well aware of parts of exchange buildings being used by Openreach which is why I made the point: "so most of an actual exchange", which you may have missed.
In the days of "proper" computers, I often worked in dark machine rooms. We put the lights on (and the Halon off!) on entry and switched them off again on exit. The bulk of the time they were dark. Some of the smaller exchanges are actually getting pretty full again due to all of the broadband equipment in them. |
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#14 |
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Join Date: Jan 2004
Location: Lancs
Posts: 7,928
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You are rather far behind the times on this one mate.
http://www.btplc.com/report/financial_fixedassets.shtml BT sold off and leased back most of their buildings back in 2001. "In December 2001, as part of a wider property outsourcing arrangement, BT completed the sale and leaseback of the majority of its UK properties to Telereal, a joint venture partnership formed by Land Securities Trillium and The William Pears Group. Around 6,700 properties were transferred totalling some 5.5 million square metres. The consideration received amounted to £2,380 million. BT has leased the properties back at a total annual rental commencing at £190 million and subject to a 3% annual increase. In addition, BT has transferred the economic risk on a large portion of its leased properties to Telereal in return for an annual rental commencing at approximately £90 million per annum. This is broadly equivalent to the current level of rentals. In February 2002, BT outsourced its property management unit to Telereal". The sort of stupid thing bean counters do, after 13 years it will be costing them money again. What is the sense of selling and renting back something you own? |
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#15 |
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Forum Member
Join Date: Oct 2001
Posts: 26,378
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Quote:
So according to the page you quoted
"In December 2001, as part of a wider property outsourcing arrangement, BT completed the sale and leaseback of the majority of its UK properties to Telereal, a joint venture partnership formed by Land Securities Trillium and The William Pears Group. Around 6,700 properties were transferred totalling some 5.5 million square metres. The consideration received amounted to £2,380 million. BT has leased the properties back at a total annual rental commencing at £190 million and subject to a 3% annual increase. In addition, BT has transferred the economic risk on a large portion of its leased properties to Telereal in return for an annual rental commencing at approximately £90 million per annum. This is broadly equivalent to the current level of rentals. In February 2002, BT outsourced its property management unit to Telereal". The sort of stupid thing bean counters do, after 13 years it will be costing them money again. What is the sense of selling and renting back something you own? |
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#16 |
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Forum Member
Join Date: Jul 2000
Posts: 4,807
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You've also got to take into account the £90m BT receive each year for rent and the reduction in the likes of maintenance charges they will have as well.
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#17 |
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Join Date: May 2008
Location: Lancashire
Posts: 8,253
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I only went to one training site owned by BT, that was at Yarnfield near Stone in Staffordshire, and was as far as I am aware the only site with accomodation for students owned by BT, all the other training schools we were sent to private houses and we were paid a 'Lodging Allowance' to pay for our accomodation.
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#18 |
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Join Date: Jan 2002
Posts: 5,187
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Quote:
I only went to one training site owned by BT, that was at Yarnfield near Stone in Staffordshire, and was as far as I am aware the only site with accomodation for students owned by BT, all the other training schools we were sent to private houses and we were paid a 'Lodging Allowance' to pay for our accomodation.
Admittedly I'm going back to the mid-1980's... |
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#19 |
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Join Date: Sep 2008
Posts: 62
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The Post Office Central Training School, Stone, later called BT Technical College Yarnfield, was sold to Accenture (formerly Anderson Consulting - they had to change the name after the Enron scandal, even though Arthur Anderson was a separate firm) and they now take students from many telecoms firms. Part of the site was demolished, and offered for sale, and accommodation and training concentrated on the rest. The 1970s 'Crossroads' accommodation blocks were derelict last time I went there and all students housed in brand-new ones.
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#20 |
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Join Date: Jul 2000
Posts: 4,807
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The Post Office Central Training School, Stone, later called BT Technical College Yarnfield, was sold to Accenture (formerly Anderson Consulting - they had to change the name after the Enron scandal, even though Arthur Anderson was a separate firm) and they now take students from many telecoms firms. Part of the site was demolished, and offered for sale, and accommodation and training concentrated on the rest. The 1970s 'Crossroads' accommodation blocks were derelict last time I went there and all students housed in brand-new ones.
The actual training rooms themselves are BT property. I've a feeling they rent the training building from Accenture though. |
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#21 |
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Join Date: Dec 2002
Location: Nottingham, UK
Posts: 1,059
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There was Bletchley as well, and Horwood House (just down the road) for the management training (long since sold off and turned into an independent conference centre). I have fond memories of courses at Horwood House.
Admittedly I'm going back to the mid-1980's... ![]() Far nicer than Yarnfield. I used to use Bletchley quite a lot for meetings until Accenture took over and increased the cost of rooms ten-fold. Perhaps that helps to pay for Accenture's head office in Old Bailey having marble floors and oak panelling everywhere. |
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#22 |
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Forum Member
Join Date: Dec 2007
Location: Herefordshire
Posts: 22,785
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Our original exchange now belongs to a local posh school apart from a tiny bit that have a load of cables in, the newer exchange is massive, but most of that is now used by the traffic police and a few offices for different companies.
i would say half a floor is used for the exchange if that. If the building went up in flames or fell down, we would be in trouble as there is no other local exchange. |
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#23 |
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Forum Member
Join Date: Oct 2006
Location: South Wales/Gran Canaria
Posts: 8,294
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Quote:
A bit OT perhaps, but I know not of a forum where it would be On Topic!
My local exchange (Epping) is a pretty big building for the size of town it serves. It has two floors each being about 17m x 65m in dimensions, which does seem somewhat excessive considering there are only just over 6000 lines in use (Some cold war usage previously perhaps?) We have a fairly controversial 'consultation' going on at the moment as an adjoining old school site & council depot is earmarked for redevelopment. Reading the document, in three of the four 'options' (including in the councils one real option, which is to build a huge new supermarket) the telephone exchange is replaced with a much smaller building. I don't know if BT has been involved with this plan, or whether the council is considering compulsory purchase. Does anyone know of a similar example where a perfectly good telephone exchange has been demolished and downsized to sell land off for building 'luxury flats'? Is this even possible without significant disruption to services? What are the stages involved? Considering there is LLU equipment and they are currently putting in FTTC, it's certainly not going to be a simple job....
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