IN THE CHANNEL Thoughts from a man who drives transformation


Rob Lee, Marketing Head at Openreach, on why copper is still the gold standard, why pastimes can seem like chores, his love of brass bands, the girl from the flake adverts, the bugbear that grates most, and why this year will be truly transformational for Openreach.


This is a milestone year for Openreach. We celebrate our fifth birthday on January 11th, and we are a key sponsor of the Government backed Year of Communication, an initiative that celebrates and encourages verbal communication among school children. Significantly, 2011 will also be the year of super-fast fibre. Not just the continuation of our fibre to the cabinet rollout, but we see real volume delivered for FTTP or fibre to the home, with headline speeds of 40MB for FTTC and 100Mbits for FTTP. By the end of this year, ten million households across the UK will have access to this super-fast service.


Although super-fast broadband is a great headline winner, our commitment to the tens of million copper lines out there stays as strong as ever. Copper is still the gold standard for voice, and who would have believed a few years back that copper could run a 40Mbit broadband service with potential for more. If you really want to talk transformation, copper is right up there.


Ethernet will also continue its rise in 2011, not just to meet the huge backhaul demands of faster broadband speeds, but driving further into the dealer and reseller markets. Prices are falling and speeds are rising. It’s the right time to move to an Ethernet future and Openreach is driving this forward with the latest technology. On a softer note, 2011 will see a new identity for Openreach,


with new liveried vans, street cabinets and a whole new look and feel – it’s an exciting time.


Pastimes can seem like chores. With five kids (three girls and two boys), every saturday and sunday I spend hours standing in the cold watching football training, football, rugby matches and cricket matches – so my 22 golf handicap stays high. I have a real love of brass bands and last summer made a comeback from retirement playing the Euphonium to a sparse crowd in Brixton Park. Being a northerner at heart, my roots lie very much in the brass band movement. My claim to fame is that I appeared in the West End version of Brassed Off, playing the actual notes for the actor who played Kevin Webster’s Dad in Corrie, and the girl from the flake adverts.


Holidays tend to be noisy and expensive with five kids. So last year Mrs Lee and I decided to go camping. ‘What no hair dryers’, cried the girls. ‘Are you having a laugh’, chimed the 18 year old boy. It ended up with just three of us in the Vendee – fabulous and cheap!


War and Peace has to be my favourite book. I haven’t read it yet, but the tome has been holding up one side of a damaged wardrobe for the last ten years without my wife noticing that I had bust it when building. Nice one Tolstoy!


www.comms-dealer.com


Rob Lee


“If you really want to talk transformation, copper is right up there”


My biggest industry bugbear is equivalence and regulation. Not the actual meaning, but how wrong some people are in interpreting this Openreach discipline. I once asked the finance team if we could refund £20 to a CP following a billing error. The accountant tried to suggest that under equivalence I must therefore refund £20 to every CP. He point blank refused to comply on this basis. In a fit of frustration I suggested he forget it and I would take the CP concerned out for a beer. Two minutes later the phone rang and


a voice said, ‘Finance here. If you are taking one CP for a beer, you must take every other one as well’. So I owe all of you a pint. Seriously, equivalence is not a burden and Openreach is definitely a commercially agile organisation.


My tip for resellers is to keep an eye on super-fast fibre. If you have customers in enabled areas, either business or consumer, they will be approached by retailers to take super-fast fibre broadband services. Contact them first and find a way to deliver their super-fast services.


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26 COMMS DEALER JANUARY 2011


www.comms-dealer.com


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