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If Ntl are going to merge they should SACK ALL NTL MANAGERS and get Telewest to run it.
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Here's my two cents on this...
I used to work in Telewest, under Networks in a department called the NTC. It was a mess.
The idea of the department was to take in Telco provisioning from the different regions (it was done by Cable London, Birmingham Cable etc in the past) and merge it into one central office. The subtext was this was a huge cost cutting exercise, moving a huge number of jobs to a small number of people.
I was there from day 1. It was a disaster. They made a lot of the people redundant who had been doing the job for the last however many years, and gave all the systems to us. What they failed to organise, however, was proper training. Or system logins. Can you imagine trying to use Lucent DACS to connect phone line pairs without any idea what youââ‚ ¬ÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¾Ã‚¢re doing?
I gave it 18 months, and then left. It really, serious was shocking. Had a serious problem? Customer cut off for 2 weeks and nobody knows how to activate the line? Well donââ‚ ¬ÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¾Ã‚¢t worry †“ there werenÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â€šà ¬Ã¢â€žÂ¢t any managers to pass it onto as they were all people managers bought in from other centres.
The project was declared a success by the spearhead to upper management. It wasnâ₠¬Ã¢â€žÂ¢t. As I left Telewest, I highlighted the complete cock ups, after two years of them. The spearhead has now departed company from Telewest.
Howard Watson, the MD in charge of networks, is a sound guy. He has his head screwed on, and Iâ₠™m sure would do an excellent job in terms of maintenance of the physical cable network. However, one thing Telewest excels at is †œProjectsà¢ÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚¬Ã‚à Â. Changing things internally with little thought of the impact. †œJobs for the boysââ‚ ¬Ã‚ is a common phrase in Telewest at ground level. Telewest needs to learn to control and manage internal projects better.