Openreach has ceased deployment of fibre broadband in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. This is unfortunate but we were left with no option after having the vast majority of our applications rejected by the council. Other councils, including those of neighbouring boroughs, have shown a greater eagerness to enjoy the benefits of fibre broadband. We will therefore re-focus our engineers' efforts in other areas where planning authorities have taken a positive approach and are keen to ensure their residents and businesses can benefit from this technology.
Coverage of this story appeared today in City AM, which reports the Borough's risk of becoming a 'technological backwater' as a result of this move.
Openreach has installed a small amount of network equipment in the Borough already, amounting to 12 cabinets. Currently one of these cabinets is Ready for Service. We intend for those end users already live to remain so and will continue to make the remaining 11 cabinets ready for service, as the work has already been done, and we do not believe it would be fair to residents for us to remove the equipment.
Thursday 31 May 2012
Tuesday 29 May 2012
Quick-thinking engineers save customer's life
Two Openreach engineers helped save the life of an elderly customer when they arrived to fix a fault on his line and found him struggling to breathe.
The Good Samaritans – Manchester-based Paul Green and Mark Hutton – phoned for an ambulance and stayed with 90-year-old Thomas until he was whisked off to hospital.
“With his phone out of order, Thomas had been unable to call his doctor or the emergency services,” explained Paul.
Once Thomas was safely in the ambulance, the engineers got to work on the line. The circuit fault was compounded by worn internal cabling and an old, permanently wired circular-dial type phone, which was itself faulty.
Mark said: “Paul and I have agreed that we’ll pay for a new phone for Thomas ourselves, and then – when we can regain access – install it and renew all the internal wiring.”
The Good Samaritans – Manchester-based Paul Green and Mark Hutton – phoned for an ambulance and stayed with 90-year-old Thomas until he was whisked off to hospital.
“With his phone out of order, Thomas had been unable to call his doctor or the emergency services,” explained Paul.
Once Thomas was safely in the ambulance, the engineers got to work on the line. The circuit fault was compounded by worn internal cabling and an old, permanently wired circular-dial type phone, which was itself faulty.
Mark said: “Paul and I have agreed that we’ll pay for a new phone for Thomas ourselves, and then – when we can regain access – install it and renew all the internal wiring.”
Wednesday 23 May 2012
Internet connected PC, phone, TV... fridge, washing machine?
A really interesting article appeared recently highlighting the growth of connectivity in the home.
People don’t think twice now about accessing the internet from home PCs or laptops. But a whole generation is growing up with smartphones keeping them connected 24/7 and smart TVs enabling them to ignore the TV schedule in favour of catch-up and video on demand services.
At the same time people can access millions of online radio stations and stream almost limitless tracks around the house using wi-fi.
There are even apps that let you control all of this – printers, TVs and music systems – using your mobile phone. And futurologists predict other home appliances, like fridges, washing machines and sprinkler systems are set to join the growing list of internet connected devices.
The key is connectivity – and your home broadband bandwidth. That’s why our fibre rollout is so important.
People don’t think twice now about accessing the internet from home PCs or laptops. But a whole generation is growing up with smartphones keeping them connected 24/7 and smart TVs enabling them to ignore the TV schedule in favour of catch-up and video on demand services.
At the same time people can access millions of online radio stations and stream almost limitless tracks around the house using wi-fi.
There are even apps that let you control all of this – printers, TVs and music systems – using your mobile phone. And futurologists predict other home appliances, like fridges, washing machines and sprinkler systems are set to join the growing list of internet connected devices.
The key is connectivity – and your home broadband bandwidth. That’s why our fibre rollout is so important.
Thursday 17 May 2012
Rutland set to benefit from £3m fibre project
Rutland County Council has just signed a £3million deal to make fibre broadband available to 90 per cent of homes and businesses by 2013.
Despite being one of England’s most rural counties, the project will provide Rutland with some of the fastest available broadband speeds anywhere in the UK. As part of the Government’s Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) programme, the deal follows hot on the heels of a similar project in Lancashire.
The council has revealed that it ultimately aims to extend fibre broadband to 97 per cent of premises in the county, to help boost the long-term prospects of the area and quality of life for everyone living and working there.
As well as speeds of up to 80Mbit/s, the county’s 17,000 homes and businesses will also have access to fibre broadband with up to 300Mbit/s available on an “on demand” basis.
Despite being one of England’s most rural counties, the project will provide Rutland with some of the fastest available broadband speeds anywhere in the UK. As part of the Government’s Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) programme, the deal follows hot on the heels of a similar project in Lancashire.
The council has revealed that it ultimately aims to extend fibre broadband to 97 per cent of premises in the county, to help boost the long-term prospects of the area and quality of life for everyone living and working there.
As well as speeds of up to 80Mbit/s, the county’s 17,000 homes and businesses will also have access to fibre broadband with up to 300Mbit/s available on an “on demand” basis.
Friday 11 May 2012
Sorry if you’ve had problems getting through to us
We've been upgrading our call centre platform recently and, unfortunately, things haven’t gone as smoothly as planned.
If you had trouble getting through to us on 3, 4 or 10 May, we’re really sorry.
On these dates more than two-thirds of our agents couldn’t get incoming calls. This was partly due to a network outage, completely unrelated to the updates. But it obviously messed things up and meant people had to wait much longer than usual to get through.
Like everyone else in the world, we know how frustrating it is to be kept waiting to talk to someone, so we’ve been working hard to make sure it doesn't happen again.
We've made some tweaks to improve performance right away and put a freeze on any further updates until things get back to normal. Our technical teams are keeping a close eye on the system and we’ll be in touch to warn you when there are any further changes planned.
If you had trouble getting through to us on 3, 4 or 10 May, we’re really sorry.
On these dates more than two-thirds of our agents couldn’t get incoming calls. This was partly due to a network outage, completely unrelated to the updates. But it obviously messed things up and meant people had to wait much longer than usual to get through.
Like everyone else in the world, we know how frustrating it is to be kept waiting to talk to someone, so we’ve been working hard to make sure it doesn't happen again.
We've made some tweaks to improve performance right away and put a freeze on any further updates until things get back to normal. Our technical teams are keeping a close eye on the system and we’ll be in touch to warn you when there are any further changes planned.
Tuesday 8 May 2012
A teacher’s view on the Communication Triathlon
From Heather Green, Asst. Head Teacher at Liss Junior School, Hampshire:
We began our two-week Communication Triathlon with an opening ceremony at assembly, with banner bearers for Thinking, Talking, and Teamwork. We tried to learn a new word every day and each class completed several of the activities, sharing their favourite one with the rest of the school in our closing ceremony.
At the end, 45 children (including 11 with Moderate Learning Difficulties) signed the song 'Proud' by Heather Small of M People fame – and there wasn’t a dry eye in the house! The press came along to take photographs and we even made it on to the front page of the local paper.
If you have children aged between 4-11, their school could benefit from the programme too. You can find out more here and there’s also a short video available to watch online.
We began our two-week Communication Triathlon with an opening ceremony at assembly, with banner bearers for Thinking, Talking, and Teamwork. We tried to learn a new word every day and each class completed several of the activities, sharing their favourite one with the rest of the school in our closing ceremony.
At the end, 45 children (including 11 with Moderate Learning Difficulties) signed the song 'Proud' by Heather Small of M People fame – and there wasn’t a dry eye in the house! The press came along to take photographs and we even made it on to the front page of the local paper.
If you have children aged between 4-11, their school could benefit from the programme too. You can find out more here and there’s also a short video available to watch online.
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