Green box doors left open

[zoombini]

If there is someone reading that can do anything about an open cabinet atthe bottom of Hargrove Avenue in Burnley, outside the Malt Shovel public house I noticed that it's wide open.

Getting it closed before the rain fills it would be a good idea.

there are no number markings on it as it's been repainted in bright green.

Lot's of wires foir the local kids to pull though.

[mrlipring]

Outside a pub? It's not rain you want to be worried about

[jiver]

lets face it......"c.c just dont care.....Sud contractors care even less about this, have you ever tried pee'ing up a rope???????

[poolking]

Originally Posted by jiver

lets face it......"c.c just dont care.....Sud contractors care even less about this, have you ever tried pee'ing up a rope???????

Could you try to make sense?

[zoombini]

it took a few goes but I got 99% of that

The box now appears to be closed.

[wsf86]

To bring some clarification to this matter, there are two types of cabinet's, mux cabs and dp's.

Mux cab doors should be (in most cases) alarmed, and as such when they are opened an alarm is reported back to the management platform and a fault raised for an engineer to attend and close the cab within 24 hours. These cab are of higher order and as such are deemed more important than their lower order equivalant - the dp. This process generally works well.

The DP cab doors are not alarmed and as such we rely on reports from the general public, or passing engineers, to inform us that the doors are open. From receiving the report the job should filter through for a Service Tech in the area to attend and close the door. However this process, to be blunt, does not work very well, and as a result the information will generally not get relayed to the correct department. This is a lack of education at the front end, i.e. who originally takes the call in the faults team from the customer. Being realistic, there are thousands of DP's across the country and inevitably there are many open either due to vandalism or simply lazy contractors. There will never be a complete fix to this situation (i.e. all cabinets secured) but I personally feel that ntl could make the process more efficient.

Hope this helps!

[ian@huth]

Why not alarm the doors on all cabs?

[jonifen]

Originally Posted by ian@huth

Why not alarm the doors on all cabs?

makes perfect sense to do so, but I would assume its down to the costing along with everything else...

[ian@huth]

Originally Posted by jonifen

makes perfect sense to do so, but I would assume its down to the costing along with everything else...

I would not have thought that it would be that expensive as all the cabs have telephone lines and cables that could transmit the status of a switch on the doors. You also have to consider the cost of not doing it against the cost for doing it.

[jonifen]

Originally Posted by ian@huth

I would not have thought that it would be that expensive as all the cabs have telephone lines and cables that could transmit the status of a switch on the doors. You also have to consider the cost of not doing it against the cost for doing it.

very true, but as more and more boxes are found to be fubar-ed, then its gonna be a huge cost to firstly repair them, then secondly install a monitor.
They then need some sort of system at their offices to show the current status of these sensors.

Its a good idea and it would work quite well, but NTL appear to prefer spending the money elsewhere at the moment...

[marky]

If the boxes were electrified it would put the kids of or maybe rig them with high explosive

[wsf86]

That would be an expensive project and involve a lot of man hours. It just aint gonna happen, and as jonifen rightly pointed out these alarms would then need to be monitored by someone & something, and there would need to be a tech available to react when the doors are opened. Remember ntl consider these cabinets to be of low order and priority. Also there are many doors out there which are open or not locked properly and are not affecting service so from ntl's point of view why should they throw money at this?? You'd be surprised at just how much it costs to truck roll an engineer to a fault, especially a Networks Engineer.

[marky]

Originally Posted by wsf86

That would be an expensive project and involve a lot of man hours. It just aint gonna happen, and as jonifen rightly pointed out these alarms would then need to be monitored by someone & something, and there would need to be a tech available to react when the doors are opened. Remember ntl consider these cabinets to be of low order and priority. Also there are many doors out there which are open or not locked properly and are not affecting service so from ntl's point of view why should they throw money at this?? You'd be surprised at just how much it costs to truck roll an engineer to a fault, especially a Networks Engineer.

I live 2 houses away from one of these boxes and i would be more than happy if i had a key because it seems the local kids have one

[ian@huth]

Originally Posted by wsf86

That would be an expensive project and involve a lot of man hours. It just aint gonna happen, and as jonifen rightly pointed out these alarms would then need to be monitored by someone & something, and there would need to be a tech available to react when the doors are opened. Remember ntl consider these cabinets to be of low order and priority. Also there are many doors out there which are open or not locked properly and are not affecting service so from ntl's point of view why should they throw money at this?? You'd be surprised at just how much it costs to truck roll an engineer to a fault, especially a Networks Engineer.

If you look up a few posts you will find another post of yours that says that some cab doors are alarmed and explains what happens when the alarm goes off. So a system already exists which needs to be monitored by someone and something. What is different about techs being available to react to these alarms and techs being available to react to customer reports? You appear to suggest that NTL does not have any system to relay customer reports of open cab doors so if they were all alarmed there would be no need for a further reporting system.

Why should NTL throw money at this? Well, open doors can mean vandalism and loss of service to customers. This costs money to resolve, repairing the damage and maybe compensating customers for loss of service. It could also lead to losing customers who suffer as a result with the cost of that loss eventually adding up to far more than the cost of installing alarms. I wonder how many of the open cabs have had someone with a phone and a couple of crocodile clips stealing phone services which ultimately some poor customer is charged for? I can just imagine an irate customer ringing up to ask why there are £50 of premium rate calls on their bill and being told that they must have made the calls or allowed some phone dialler to be installed on their computer. NTL couldn't possibly be at fault for not having properly secured cabs or any sytem to deal with open ones.

In a way those cabs are an extension of our wallets and should be secured properly.

[wsf86]

The primary difference is there are 10-20 times more lower order cabinets compared to higher order. Also there is no expensive equipment within the lower order cabinets. If one is vandalised it may affect 10-20 customers at a time and to be honest they aren't vandalised that often. You have to look at it from a company point of view and the return on investment to install alarms, monitor them and react just isn't there. The cost of repairing the odd damaged/vandalised DP is minute compared to actively monitoring and closing the doors.

To answer your other couple of issues, very few customers actually demand compensation and when they do they recieve peanuts, so this really isn't an issue. Secondly I agree there is the possibilty of customer fall out from disrupted service but I believe ntl would regard this as acceptable losses.

From personal experience I would say that ntl are far more intersted in gaining new customers than worrying about it's current customer base, mainly because the majority of people are inherently lazy and will not jump ship, so why should they worry?

There is an obvious financial undertone to all that ntl does, you have to remember that this a company run by the banks to make as much money for it's shareholder as possible, full stop. Everything else, including you and me, is an after thought. Once you accept this life becomes much easier!!!