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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

#51

Post by xenadu02 »

dangus wrote: post #6

Now I know that employers will ultimately replace many employees with automation but this plan as stated seems rather ambitious if not completely unrealistic. Based on the last few lines of the article I think this CEO is trying to hype up a company that is facing serious struggles and decline of their core business: > BT said revenue fell 1% to £20.7 billion ($25.8 billion) for the year to March, with growth in Open…

It's the constant yin-yang of MBA types running companies. They proclaim some modernization effort or another will let them downsize the expensive employees (or they just do a layoff to bump the stock price).

Then when the project fails to deliver, the sales pipeline dries up, projects stop getting done, etc they'll announce a hiring spree with great fanfare. Look at me, I'm a great CEO and leader! I'm going to re-hire the X positions we laid off or eliminated over the past 5 years under my prior leadership to solve the problems I created!

In the UK BT is a captive utility so shuffling the deck chairs is as good as doing real work I guess.

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

#52

Post by wil421 »

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…

I work in this space at an American telco and you are correct. The only thing I haven’t seen is AI doing it. However there are AI/ML features built into the monitor tools we use.

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

#53

Post by flumpcakes »

arethuza wrote: post #46
orra wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but they were doing a massive modernisation project so hired to deliver it. Now that it's done they'll downsize. Broadly right, but your tense is wrong. Openreach's[1] FTTP rollout program extends to the end of December 2026. Realistically, it may be delayed, because the scale is rather huge. [1] A subsidiary of BT who own the infrastructure, for competition grounds

I was rather surprised when Openreach came round and fitted our fairly rural area in Scotland with FTTP. We went from 20 down and 1 up to 1000 down and up. Might not be 1000 up but certainly seems like it compared to what we had before!

I'm pretty confident it is not 1000 up.

Like usual the UK have already fitted substandard infrastructure.

The BT "FTTP" network is in fact shared fibre with up to 63 of your neighbours. It's based on old GPON technology.

This is why you may get 1Gb/s down but you will be limited to approximately 110Mb/s up.

The reason being that your downstream is broadcasted to all terminals, but AES encrypted (so your traffic is also sent to your neighbours) but the upstream traffic is sent using time division, so you get 1/64th of a unit to upload.

Then everyone is over provisioned, and over sold, so they give you a number that is higher than 1/64 because of the assumption that you and your neighbours won't all trying to use your maximum bandwidth at once.

Compare this to HyperOptic, or CityFibre who will plumb a slither of glass from your home, directly to the ISP. You get a full fat ethernet connection straight to the internet, 1Gb/s down, 1Gb/s up. BT could have done this too, but instead we get ADSL version of fibre.

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

#54

Post by flumpcakes »

AlphaSite wrote: post #49
jarym wrote: post #24

BT has been downsizing for years, it is a shell of its former self already. What strikes me as odd is they're viewing 'modernisation' efforts as one-time activities. Come 2030 are they saying they won't need to invest in their network as much or upgrade things? I think that's what they are saying, and I don't think they're going to be right.

I think once you have fiber to peoples homes, you don’t really need to dig it all up again for probably another 50 years. Replacing every copper cable with fiber in the country is a gargantuan effort.

That might be true if it was proper FTTP, as optical glass can last centuries, and is the perfect practical medium for information transfer. You could probably do it once and never have to replace it ever again.

But BT cheaped out and put down GPON. Maybe in 50 years time the average household will need more than 100Mb/s upload.

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

#55

Post by orra »

flumpcakes wrote: post #53
arethuza wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was rather surprised when Openreach came round and fitted our fairly rural area in Scotland with FTTP. We went from 20 down and 1 up to 1000 down and up. Might not be 1000 up but certainly seems like it compared to what we had before!

I'm pretty confident it is not 1000 up. Like usual the UK have already fitted substandard infrastructure. The BT "FTTP" network is in fact shared fibre with up to 63 of your neighbours. It's based on old GPON technology. This is why you may get 1Gb/s down but you will be limited to approximately 110Mb/s up. The reason being that your downstream is broadcasted to all terminals, but AES encrypted (so your traffic is al…

Yes, GPON is overprovisioned (at 1:32 for Openreach). However, that isn't the full explanation for mediocre upload speeds on Openreach. GPON has a total shared capacity of 2.4 Gbps down and 1.2 Gbps. So you'd think if 1 Gbps down is possible, 500 Mbps up would be.

Simply, Openreach probably have mediocre upload speeds on FTTP, so they can protect their leased line profit margins.

CityFibre use GPON, the exact same technology as Openreach. Yes, CityFibre offer a nice symmetric service on top of that, because real world contention is usually much lower than the theoretical maximum. It's also worth noting CityFibre are starting to upgrade to XGS-PON.

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

#56

Post by arethuza »

flumpcakes wrote: post #53
arethuza wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was rather surprised when Openreach came round and fitted our fairly rural area in Scotland with FTTP. We went from 20 down and 1 up to 1000 down and up. Might not be 1000 up but certainly seems like it compared to what we had before!

I'm pretty confident it is not 1000 up. Like usual the UK have already fitted substandard infrastructure. The BT "FTTP" network is in fact shared fibre with up to 63 of your neighbours. It's based on old GPON technology. This is why you may get 1Gb/s down but you will be limited to approximately 110Mb/s up. The reason being that your downstream is broadcasted to all terminals, but AES encrypted (so your traffic is al…

Well, being in a reasonably rural part of Scotland I'd have to go quite far to find 63 neighbours!

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

#57

Post by flumpcakes »

orra wrote: post #55
flumpcakes wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty confident it is not 1000 up. Like usual the UK have already fitted substandard infrastructure. The BT "FTTP" network is in fact shared fibre with up to 63 of your neighbours. It's based on old GPON technology. This is why you may get 1Gb/s down but you will be limited to approximately 110Mb/s up. The reason being that your downstream is broadcasted to all terminals, but AES encrypted (so your traffic is al…

Yes, GPON is overprovisioned (at 1:32 for Openreach). However, that isn't the full explanation for mediocre upload speeds on Openreach. GPON has a total shared capacity of 2.4 Gbps down and 1.2 Gbps. So you'd think if 1 Gbps down is possible, 500 Mbps up would be. Simply, Openreach probably have mediocre upload speeds on FTTP, so they can protect their leased line profit margins. CityFibre use GPON, the exact same te…

> GPON has a total shared capacity of 2.4 Gbps down and 1.2 Gbps. So you'd think if 1 Gbps down is possible, 500 Mbps up would be.

The "download" direction is sent to you and all your neighbours and only you can access the information as it is AES encrypted to your terminal (CPE, etc.). So you could get 2.4Gbps down, as long as your neighbours are not using it.

1.2Gbps "upload" direction is time shared, so you will never get the full 1.2Gpbs unless you have literally zero neighbours / other terminals on the optical bundle.

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

#58

Post by orra »

flumpcakes wrote: post #57
orra wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, GPON is overprovisioned (at 1:32 for Openreach). However, that isn't the full explanation for mediocre upload speeds on Openreach. GPON has a total shared capacity of 2.4 Gbps down and 1.2 Gbps. So you'd think if 1 Gbps down is possible, 500 Mbps up would be. Simply, Openreach probably have mediocre upload speeds on FTTP, so they can protect their leased line profit margins. CityFibre use GPON, the exact same te…

> GPON has a total shared capacity of 2.4 Gbps down and 1.2 Gbps. So you'd think if 1 Gbps down is possible, 500 Mbps up would be. The "download" direction is sent to you and all your neighbours and only you can access the information as it is AES encrypted to your terminal (CPE, etc.). So you could get 2.4Gbps down, as long as your neighbours are not using it. 1.2Gbps "upload" direction is time shared, so you will n…

Dynamic Bandwidth Allocation (DBA) fixes the TDM limited upload that you describe. https://www.lightwaveonline.com/fttx/pon-systems/article/166...

Again, CityFibre is not Point to Point fibre. They offer 1Gbps upload on GPON, contended at 1:32. From the horse's mouth: https://cdn.cityfibre.com/Partner-page/Downloads/CF-FTTH-Loc...

Even Openreach have a 220Mbit/s upload tier, but it costs more than twice as much so nobody offers it for home users. https://www.openreach.co.uk/orpg/home/products/pricing/loadP...

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

#59

Post by goofy_goober »

aynyc wrote: post #30

First, I seriously doubt AI will replaced 55K people by 2030. However, even if it turns out to be a mess and we look back and laugh at it like we do with BTC. The negative side of this type of corporate behavior will only push more and more people away from the traditional work force or just work force completely. I'm not a big fan of modern capitalism and its overworking culture, but societies in generally can't han…

BTC isn't even a good comparison in this case. We can talk about its intentions endlessly, but the fact of the matter is that you can buy some actually useful stuff with it at the end of the day (pornography, VPN services, domain names, computer and electrical equipment from NewEgg, etc), pay state taxes with it in Colorado (and taxes in the Swiss canton of Zug), and it has even gained legal tender status in some countries.

Generative AI and stuff like that will be much easier to judge the success or failure of. If we are ripping our hair out when contacting customer support 15 years from now (roughly the amount of time Bitcoin has existed), generative AI (I assume that's what you're talking about) for the purposes of customer support is a failure. Beyond that, sophisticated generative AI is the digital equivalent of discovering nuclear fission: it destroys online human discourse and pollutes the areas it infects with artificial garbage (fallout). I know I'm not the only one who's sick of seeing DALL-E stuff on Instagram and DeviantArt, and seeing stuff obviously written by LLMs in internet comment sections.

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