[Merged]Ntl to buy Telewest

[Robert Atkins]

So BBking can you answer this question:

"When there was a power outage, we used to be asked how many customrs it affected."

I don't think so somehow. Is that the 2003 report you are refering to? I have not seen one in 2004...

[Escapee]

Originally Posted by BBKing

Who says we don't know how many people are fed from a node? I have a report here, colour coded, showing % online/offline at node level for any UBR. Dead useful.

Granted if you are saying there is one node per UBR port.

I agree the resegmentation has narrowed things down, but thats only a benefit for stats relating to broadband customers. I would think it's a different story on the original ntl areas where the set top box is seperate from the cabel modem and on different systems, and of course any analogue customers.

The idiotic part back in the analogue days was the Jerrold ACC4000 had a field called "Amplifier" or "Node" in the database(not sure off the top of my head) this could be filled in for each customer when the customer was installed on the system. ntl never made use of the facility. Certainly in the original ntl ie: CableTel areas it wasn't used anyway.

When digital was launched in orig ntl areas and cable modems for that matter the return path was combined at the 2 ring level, so it was only possible to track a set-top down to approx one of 16 nodes. I thought it was very short sighted from the very first time in CableTel days I saw the facility on the ACC4000 being ignored.

If you now have one UBR port per node things are much easier if you are looking for customers,(still a prob in orig ntl areas though) but the best would obviously be to have a customers DP recorded. I hold my hand up if this has now changed and someone has sat down to record all those hundreds of thousands of customrs and DP's, Perhaps it has now been imported from another database and my experience is a bit out of date.

[Escapee]

Originally Posted by Robert Atkins

So BBking can you answer this question:

"When there was a power outage, we used to be asked how many customrs it affected."

I don't think so somehow. Is that the 2003 report you are refering to? I have not seen one in 2004...

I'm no sure if you were asking me that, it's from one of my posts!

The FMC used to collect all the figures for a Network database and there was a quarterly (I think) chart produced to show network availability.
There was much fiddling going on because in those days the bonus was affected by those figures.

The FMC (or CS) would have no idea how many customers were fed from a particular node, so the figure connected to the node was guessed by the network tech and a percentage was taken off for the customers who didn't have any power at their house. A similar thing happened when one channel was off service, for example a headend with 100000 customers losing sky sports 1 is not 100000 customers without service, because perhaps 60000 dont subscribe to that channel! Although the management argued that it wasn;t available for all 100000 if they had wanted to upgrade at that time.

[Robert Atkins]

Hi Escapee,

I was asking BBKing but you have clarified the matter brilliantly.

Thanks
Rob

[BBKing]

I don't think so somehow. Is that the 2003 report you are refering to? I have not seen one in 2004...

It's a 4/12/2004 report, I wrote it and it works in real-time. So I do think so, somehow. And it's not per UBR port either, I do know the difference between nodes and upstreams. It would be completely daft to have node<>upstream 1-1 relationships, too. So we don't.

When digital was launched in orig ntl areas and cable modems for that matter the return path was combined at the 2 ring level, so it was only possible to track a set-top down to approx one of 16 nodes

Odd - I can track it down to cabinet within two or three seconds.

[Escapee]

Originally Posted by BBKing

It's a 4/12/2004 report, I wrote it and it works in real-time. So I do think so, somehow. And it's not per UBR port either, I do know the difference between nodes and upstreams. It would be completely daft to have node<>upstream 1-1 relationships, too. So we don't.



Odd - I can track it down to cabinet within two or three seconds.

Well, I wasn't trying to be sarcastic even if it did come across that way!

I wasn't suggesting you didn't know the difference between nodes and upstream either. It was not my intention to do that, I was just pointing out facilities that were never implemented from day one when it would of been a lot easier.

I was just pointing out that it can only be tracked to a cabinet if someone has input the data at the time of install. If a customer disconnected his cable modem and takes it to another cabinet fed from the same node who would know! Would your stats tell you that?

If you can track it to a cabinet within two to three seconds I presume you mean a Nodal cabinet, if you are talking about DA or DP level then you are surely relying on data that someone has put in a database at the time of install and not from any UBR stats.

[BBKing]

It is indeed install-date data, but this is actually pretty reliable (surprisingly) as: a) it's easy to filter out those which are obviously in the wrong area (i.e. if a box is on a UBR in Glasgow and the cabinet shows as in Bromley, then ignore it.
b) we're only interested in nice customers - boxes that move around by themselves are naughty customers (likely to be nicked/eBayed).

that were never implemented from day one when it would of been a lot easier.

It was half-implemented, in that data gets input at install, but it took brainpower to realise that you can use the install-time HFC data with the real-time UBR data to map things pretty well.

[quadplay]

Getting back to the original topic...

Cable firms to start merger talks 'early next year', from The Grauniad.

[Ramrod]

I did a telewest postcode check and ended up with an interesting message........

The postcode you have entered is outside the Telewest Broadband cabled area. Unfortunately, this means it is not possible to offer you any of our services at present.

However, you can now take advantage of great value Broadband Internet & Telephone services from ntl as part of their Freedom packages. Find out more by visiting their website or clicking the links below.

[quadplay]

Well, Telewest don't have an off-net package, so I'm guessing ntl pay them to refer off-net customers to freedom. Good marketing, IMO.

[orangebird]

Originally Posted by jimbo

Well, Telewest don't have an off-net package, so I'm guessing ntl pay them to refer off-net customers to freedom. Good marketing, IMO.

They've done that for a long time. I believe Telewest refer you to ntl when it's the other way round too.

[etccarmageddon]

yeah that message has been there for years and was part of an agreement made by NTL and Telewest some time ago - nowt to do with the merger but an obvious indication of how a merger would be beneficial!

[Ramrod]

Oh.........

http://networks.silicon.com/telecoms...9126643,00.htm

[andrew_wallasey]

Originally Posted by Ramrod

I did a telewest postcode check and ended up with an interesting message........

they have been doing that for about 3 years.