V3.co.uk took a trip to Milton Keynes on Wednesday to visit a BT facility in the city and see first hand just what it takes to roll out fibre to the premise (FTTP) internet connections.

What we found was an incredibly complex, difficult and downright fiddly job (fibres are very small, you know) that has too be carried out day and night come rain or shine, with almost each and every deployment throwing up the possibility of an unexpected issue to deal with.

Below are some choice images from our tour.

The Milton Keynes area is currently the trial location for BT's rollout of 100Mbit/s service, with the shaded green area where the firm is running FTTP connections.

Fibre runs from BT's central location down through various network elements, splitting off in to smaller segments to reach as many users as possible. Colour-coded tubes are used to ensure the right fibres are linked together at each point where they split.

BT has 15 splitters like this in the Walnut Tree area of Milton Keynes that each contain the ability to host connections for 128 premises from dedicated fibre links.

The staff at the facility said the hardest skill for engineers was "fibre management", given how small and intricate the storage of fibre in these pieces of equipment needs to be.

To push the fibre through the subducts that protect it, engineers use "blowing machines" that use compressed air to pump fibre along until it reaches the other end of the pipe.

This can run from between a few metres to several kilometers. The demonstration saw was over 84m.

To overcome the challenges of FTTP deployments, engineers now carry a raft of new equipment including generators to power the blowing machines, petrol to power the generators, up to 1km of fibre and even a tent (the long, blue bag) so they can carry out the splicing of fibre out of the rain.

The splicing machine fuses two pieces of fibre together so engineers can link various phases together when connecting premises to the central network.

V3.co.uk had a go at using the machine and achieved a potential loss of speed of just 0.01dB, the same as the seasoned BT Openreach pro who guided us through the processes.

Ducts containing distribution points with fibre connections (bottom left) sit waiting to be hooked up to premises with the new 100Mbit/s speed.

BT estimates it will take engineers around four and a half hours to set up each FTTP connection given the work involved splicing fibre and running it in to each building.

02 Mar 2011