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BT will shed as many as 55,000 workers by 2030

cnn.com

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Re: BT will shed as many as 55,000 workers by 2030

#31

Post by Lio »

tyingq wrote: post #4

42% fewer employees, 7 years in the future? Including hopes for things like this: "Jansen also said that around 10,000 fewer people would be needed to service and repair digital networks, which “go wrong less often” and can be fixed more easily than older networks." That feels optimistic. Modernization does help with that sort of thing in some ways. But it also often adds complexity, higher dependency counts, etc.

I can see some of this being true.

A copper line isn't a continuous thing from the exchange to the customer. It's made of a number of sections that are joined together.

Now someone who once worked for a large British telecoms company once told me that they'd done some modelling, maybe using something like system dynamics if I was guessing, to gauge the effect of work on the network.

Any interaction with the equipment, whether to set up lines for a customer or even fix faults leads to more faults. So it ends up being more profitable to just leave equipment in place than to reuse it.

Based on that I would say that having all the pairs terminating at the cab instead of the exchange and using remotely configurable equipment would be a greater improvement again.

Just guessing you understand, I have no inside knowledge. ;)

Re: BT will shed as many as 55,000 workers by 2030

#32

Post by agumonkey »

The AI mention is interesting even if PR. There's a wide gap between no AI, and AI doing all the hard / boring stuff so people can be happy. And the way we (might) transition from the former to the latter will have a big impact on many people. If AI becomes a wealth only accessible to some economic classes leveraging it for profits, it will propel pain toward the other. Anybody trying to ensure this evolves in a smooth way for everybody ?

Re: BT will shed as many as 55,000 workers by 2030

#33

Post by benjaminwootton »

onion2k wrote: post #18
tyingq wrote: post #4

42% fewer employees, 7 years in the future? Including hopes for things like this: "Jansen also said that around 10,000 fewer people would be needed to service and repair digital networks, which “go wrong less often” and can be fixed more easily than older networks." That feels optimistic. Modernization does help with that sort of thing in some ways. But it also often adds complexity, higher dependency counts, etc.

Modernization does help with that sort of thing in some ways. But it also often adds complexity, higher dependency counts, etc. The complexity is inside opaque boxes that BT deploys though. Rather than fixing things like they did in the past, sitting at the end of a street patching cables in a roadside cabinet, BT's engineers of the future will just unclip a box that's returning an error code and plug in a new one. O…

The technology was improving even on the copper stuff. The last time my broadband went down, I clicked a button in the app and they acknowledged a fault. An engineer came out the next day, plugged his iPad in and could see that there was a break in the cable approximately 16 metres away. And it turned out to be correct.

To say it’s all based on copper cables, it was pretty impressive.

Re: BT will shed as many as 55,000 workers by 2030

#34

Post by tyingq »

blibble wrote: post #19
tyingq wrote: post #4

42% fewer employees, 7 years in the future? Including hopes for things like this: "Jansen also said that around 10,000 fewer people would be needed to service and repair digital networks, which “go wrong less often” and can be fixed more easily than older networks." That feels optimistic. Modernization does help with that sort of thing in some ways. But it also often adds complexity, higher dependency counts, etc.

it's passive fibre replacing copper placed in the ground 80 years ago it's going to be more reliable even if they completely screw everything up

In isolation that makes sense. But other things are happening too. New equipment that does more, new services, customer growth, and so on.

Re: BT will shed as many as 55,000 workers by 2030

#35

Post by ta1243 »

Lio wrote: post #31
tyingq wrote: post #4

42% fewer employees, 7 years in the future? Including hopes for things like this: "Jansen also said that around 10,000 fewer people would be needed to service and repair digital networks, which “go wrong less often” and can be fixed more easily than older networks." That feels optimistic. Modernization does help with that sort of thing in some ways. But it also often adds complexity, higher dependency counts, etc.

I can see some of this being true. A copper line isn't a continuous thing from the exchange to the customer. It's made of a number of sections that are joined together. Now someone who once worked for a large British telecoms company once told me that they'd done some modelling, maybe using something like system dynamics if I was guessing, to gauge the effect of work on the network. Any interaction with the equipment…

My team is responsible for many services running over openreach and other BT point to point fibres, both local connections like EADs, and longer distance stuff. My company has thousands.

The number of RFOs I see which report outages due to either fibre disturbances in an exchange or is phenomenal. I don't really have any idea how that compares with copper, but my home DSL runs over copper to the exchange and doesn't go down anywhere near as much.

Re: BT will shed as many as 55,000 workers by 2030

#36

Post by ttul »

justinzollars wrote: post #17
ttul wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once in a while, you should swap out the PM’s personality with a new one and your robot HR manager can make the firing announcement. Come to think of it, every company could use a few AI-based middle managers for entertainment purposes.

Thats a fantastic idea. I'll add it to my roadmap!

Come to think of it, having a fake management layer that endlessly has meetings and makes “decisions” could be an effective anti-phishing mechanism. Try your luck finding the 1% of my employees that are living, breathing humans with any access to real resources!

Re: BT will shed as many as 55,000 workers by 2030

#37

Post by madaxe_again »

benjaminwootton wrote: post #33
onion2k wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Modernization does help with that sort of thing in some ways. But it also often adds complexity, higher dependency counts, etc. The complexity is inside opaque boxes that BT deploys though. Rather than fixing things like they did in the past, sitting at the end of a street patching cables in a roadside cabinet, BT's engineers of the future will just unclip a box that's returning an error code and plug in a new one. O…

The technology was improving even on the copper stuff. The last time my broadband went down, I clicked a button in the app and they acknowledged a fault. An engineer came out the next day, plugged his iPad in and could see that there was a break in the cable approximately 16 metres away. And it turned out to be correct. To say it’s all based on copper cables, it was pretty impressive.

You could do that 20 years ago by calling the lineman’s number and choosing the relevant function - it’s all on tablets now, I’m sure, but around 2000 it was all done using a phone call and a robotic voice, and there were engineer pins floating around on the internet.

Re: BT will shed as many as 55,000 workers by 2030

#39

Post by gumballindie »

tyingq wrote: post #4

42% fewer employees, 7 years in the future? Including hopes for things like this: "Jansen also said that around 10,000 fewer people would be needed to service and repair digital networks, which “go wrong less often” and can be fixed more easily than older networks." That feels optimistic. Modernization does help with that sort of thing in some ways. But it also often adds complexity, higher dependency counts, etc.

> which “go wrong less often” and can be fixed more easily than older networks.

What they mean is that consumers will be stuck with slow internet connections. As a result of customers switching to other providers they’ll have less equipment breaking down. Since you know it’s no longer in use.

Re: BT will shed as many as 55,000 workers by 2030

#40

Post by tailspin2019 »

Jochim wrote: post #26
tailspin2019 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most companies today can barely create a functioning website that allows you to see and pay your bills. I haven’t dealt with them in recent years but based on previous dealings, I would put BT firmly in that category.

I've been dealing with a fibre upgrade issue for three months now. Four times in total their support has offered to call me with an update. Twice they scheduled a specific date and time for the call. I've yet to receive a single phone call or email from them. Their checkout flow can break. In some browsers it'll get stuck in an infinite redirect loop. If you're using edge you'll get redirected to a page that shows th…

Sounds like they haven't changed then.

Sigh... it's depressing just reading this... you have my sympathy! :)

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