It's snow time to stop

The weather may have de-railed train companies, grounded airlines and put the skids on commuters, but it took more than a bit of snow to stop our engineers – with one or two even stripping off for work, despite the Arctic conditions.

Engineers prove they
have "the white stuff"

Amid heavy snow across the UK, our engineering teams pulled out all the stops to ensure that, wherever it was safe enough to do so, they maintained services – dealing with customer faults in the sub-zero temperatures.

Conditions were so severe in many areas – particularly in Wales – that major disruption was caused to airports, railways and roads.

But special snow socks for the wheels of Openreach vans proved vital in ensuring the vehicles were able to drive along icy roads. Some crews also used 4x4 vehicles to get around in the worst of the weather.

Howard Pugh, Openreach senior operations manager for Mid Wales and Shrewsbury said: “The snow plan we put in place has worked really well and the troops have been fantastic as we put more customers back into service than I ever thought we would have done. And, above all, we have had no accidents reported.

“The snow socks made a huge difference, keeping the fleet as mobile as possible. I’m very proud of the team.”

Giving a whole new meaning to the term "ice pole"

Engineers Paul Thompson and Jim Parry from the Network Delivery South West team proved they're made of stern stuff as they carried on working in the snow – and stripped to the waist after building up a sweat locating and digging out manholes.

Openreach chief executive Liv Garfield praised teams for doing “an amazing job”. She said: “It’s a huge step forward from previous winters.  The work we have done on the last few months planning for the snow has been massively beneficial.”

Why you might need to upgrade your 100Mb circuits sooner than you think

How things change. I can remember when owning a Walkman was cool; when mobile phones were just for making phone calls and the unmistakable sound of the dial-up modem. Well it wasn’t that long ago was it?

You only have to go back a few years when transmitting data at 300 bits per second over PSTN was considered state-of-the-art. Today, our Ethernet networks run over 3 million times faster.

The impressive bandwidth 1Gb offers is the natural choice for network backbones, but with traffic growing rapidly on networks across the UK, 1Gb Ethernet will soon become the preferred high-speed network solution. Despite the inherent benefits of upgrading to 1Gb, however, many don’t think it’s worth the cost or trouble.

Some are worried about the cost of adopting new technology. Others don’t feel there’s any need to rush, and that they’re actually saving money by postponing their upgrade until they’re entirely sure they need it, or a specific application requires it.

But are you really saving money by postponing your upgrade to 1Gb EAD? The answer is probably not; in fact, not upgrading may actually be costing your business.

So why aren't you using 1Gb EAD?

Being frank, there isn’t a reason to rush to upgrade your network immediately if you’re not experiencing any performance issues. But, if you’re in the early throes of setting up a network backbone, you’ll be seriously hampering your network and thus your business’ growth by continuing to use 100Mb Ethernet. You’ll probably end up spending more money and expending more effort when you eventually upgrade.

Sometimes a lack of funds gets in the way; budgets may not be able to stretch to accommodate a full upgrade. There’s always the option of using Ethernet switches with combinations of both 100Mb and 1Gb. It depends on what applications you need to support and you may be able to meet some of your present and future needs.

Whatever approach you believe is best, one thing is clear: there has never been a better time to upgrade your Ethernet circuits.

The Openreach EAD 1Gb upgrade offer is a great way to reclaim some of your investment costs, with rebates of up to 75 per cent of the upgrade connection fee. But you’ll need to hurry as the offer expires on 31 March 2013.

If you’re interested in taking advantage of this offer you'll need to opt-in by adding your details in our opt-in form. This will ensure that any 100Mb to 1Gb upgrades you make in the special offer period between 1 October 2012 to 31 March 2013 are eligible for the rebates.

Don’t forget that EAD 1Gb rental prices have been reduced by up to 42 per cent, so it’s a great opportunity to make 1Gb Ethernet part of your network development plans. Even if you don't think you need 1Gb Ethernet now, you need to make sure you’re prepared. The time to upgrade will come sooner than you think.

It’s funny how quickly things change.

If you have any questions, please speak to your Sales & Relationship Manager.

Juwon Adenyin

Helping you to help yourself

Just before Christmas, we outlined some of the resources available on our website to help you get more out of it. Now that the tinsel has been packed away it’s time to delve a little bit further and show you how you can set up the portal in the way that suits you best and get everything you need right at your fingertips.

Last time, we focused on getting started and moving around the website. This time we’ll give you some tips on personalising the portal, searching generally and locating pricing documents in particular.

First you need to go to our website homepage, where you’ll see a Help & Support tab in the top menu. In this section there’s lots of advice and guidance, but the best place to start might be the computer based training modules as you’ll get top tips in short, easy-to-digest video presentations.

Personalising the portal

It's definitely worth taking a few minutes to personalise the portal to suit your needs. This is really easy to do. The ‘My Dashboard’ homepage you see immediately after logging in offers three main ways to tailor things:

1. My Tools 
You’ll find the My Tools section on the top left of the page. By clicking ‘other tools’ you’ll be able to access pricing, dialogue services, fault tracking and order tracking tools, among a whole host of options.

2. My View
This tool enables you to set up defaults for your preferred products (Ethernet, WLR) and view (eg business process or technical). You can even set the default for the release number you’re most interested in so that these appear at the top of any search results.

3. My Favourites
Any time you’re logged in and you see the My Favourites star icon in the top right corner of a page, just click on it to add the page to your list of favourites so it’ll always be just one click away from the pages you use most.

Find out more about personalising the portal

Searching the portal

The search button at the top of every page is a really quick way to find what you need. A powerful, intelligent search engine sits beneath the portal with two main choices:

1. Simple search
Just type a word or phrase for a list of results sorted by relevance. Then refine the results to drill into things and home in on the info you need – for example, narrowing results by type or finding related content.

2. Advanced search
The advanced search enables you to set parameters before starting to search – rather than doing a simple search and then digging down. With a more comprehensive starting point you’re refining the results before you search.

Don’t forget we also have an extensive glossary so if you ever need to know your ALK from your ETSI, it’s all spelled out right here.

See how to make the most of the search function

Where do I find pricing information?

One of the most frequently asked questions, and one of the most important parts of the website. The pricing information is stored in the products section, within the Business View.

This short presentation shows you how to access pricing information

Next time we’ll show you how to access and use the business process documents, find the B2B XML definitions and stay on top of the latest updates through the Customer Information Zone.