Case Studies

Background

Stadium House was a last minute replacement to Stadium Plazza due to a change in ownership and it was identified as a potential fast ball which would involve the senior management of BT and EE. The site was instructed in February 2017 and completed in May 2017 however due to its location, it was the ideal location for a fastball for a site to support super fast 4g for the Champions league Final.

Key Facts

• Time.. Site needed to be finished from identification to completion in 4 months
• Council Road Closure - the site originally required a road closure for a crane
• Multiple disciples - multi visits with multiple teams
• Out of Hours working
• Weather - needed a plan B in case of bad weather

Background

The UK Government and OFCOM have put superfast broadband and full-fibre at the heart of Britain’s digital communication. CityFibre is the UK’s largest alternative provider of wholesale fibre network infrastructure and the builder of Gigabit Cities

Key Facts

• As a PC1 supplier to Cityfibre Waldon are responsible for all aspects of build on the FEX program
• In April 2019, Waldon Telecom won an ADC project for 35 cities.
• In 2020, Waldon have built all of their allocated FEX
• One of 2 suppliers providing compound or warehouse FEX solutions.
• Following Waldon’s acquisition by MGroup in 2021, we are no able to offer end to end capabilities - unique to the industry.

Background

The UK Government and OFCOM have put superfast broadband and full-fibre at the heart of Britain’s digital communication. Despite the country having one of the highest levels of internet adoption in the world, it is near the bottom of the infrastructure league tables for full fibre communications network.

Key Facts (Project Lightning)

• As a tier 1 provider to Virgin Media’s Project Lightning programme, Avonline Network Services Ltd has, to date, constructed in excess of 750 km of FTTP network passing c. 90,000 premises.
• In April 2019, ANSL successfully secured a new 5 year contract to continue building FTTP infrastructure in the South West, Wales and North East of England.
• 2020 forecast build = 50,000 gross premises; 500 km construction.
• 2021-24 forecast build = c.300k gross premises; 3,000 km construction.
• ANSL scope encompasses full end to end FTTP service, including survey, route proving, network construction, cabling , splicing, testing and commissioning.
• Expert knowledge of MDU Build and works in Openreach network, to support large scale PIA rollout.

Key Facts (Build Evolution)

• In June 2020, ANSL successfully commenced works on a new 5 year turnkey contract providing design and build services to support the deployment of PIA enabled FTTP networks in the South West, Wales and North East England.
• 2020 forecast build = 10,000 gross premises; 100km construction.
• 2021-25 forecast build = c.250k gross premises; 2,500 km construction.
• ANSL turnkey scope encompasses HLD and LLD design works, PIA intrusive survey/pre-provisioning, network construction, cabling, splicing, testing and commissioning.

Background

The UK Government and OFCOM have put superfast broadband and full-fibre at the heart of Britain’s digital communications. Despite the country having one of the highest level of internet adoptions in the world, full-fibre has always appeared at the lower end of the infrastructure league table.

Openreach

• Openreach owns and maintains the telephone wires, ducts, cabinets and exchanges that connect nearly all homes and businesses in the UK to the national broadband and telephone network
• In 2010 Openreach started a Next Generation Access (NGA) program to roll out superfast broadband using fibre to the cabinet (FTTC), technology which supports download speeds of more than 24 Mbit/s), aimed at covering 66% of the UK’s population; target was later increased to 95%.
• Since 2012, Morrison Utility Services have been instrumental in helping Openreach deliver the NGA and maintain Openreach’s network under its Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK), Superfast Extension Programme (SEP), Network Extension and Maintenance Service Agreement (NEMSA) contracts.

Key Facts

• UK premises with access to superfast broadband cover 90,000 street cabinets and 5,600 local exchanges
• Morrison Utility Services covers South East (SEP and NEMSA), North West (SEP/NEMSA), North East (SEP), Scotland (BDUK) regions with total  population of more than 19m people
• Scope includes design and build of Fibre to the Cabinet and Fibre to the Home technologies.

Background

In February 2021, following a prolonged period of home working and home schooling due to the coronavirus pandemic, coupled with increases in TV downloads; Openreach required to upgrade the backhaul fibre capacity on parts of their FTTC network. Magdalene was an existing supply partner to Openreach, who had successfully delivered a number of FTTC cabinet upgrades, and were asked to ramp up resources in order to provide the necessary backhaul upgrades. Furthermore Magdalene mobilised 40 fibre splicing engineers over a six week period to provide and test new fibre links where needed.

Fibre Backhaul Upgrade – Scope of Work

• Magdalene worked with Openreach to provide clear processes for work distribution, commissioning completed work and resolving any problems.
• Engineers provided new fibre routes through the network to the FTTC cabinets which required upgrades.
• Exchange fibre cabling was completed on Optical Distribution Frames.
• Fibre in node splicing was carried out throughout the Openreach external network.
• Light loss testing was completed and records returned to the Openreach control centre.
• Fibres were connected to exchange and FTTC cabinet equipment.
• New links were commissioned and brought into service allowing engineers to progress to their next location.
• Out of hours and weekend working was introduced to maximise throughput.

Key Facts

• 40 fibre splicing engineers were mobilised in 6 weeks and a new programme office was established to control the workflow.
• 3500 Fibre Backhaul upgrades were completed in a 22 week timeframe.
• 200 upgrades were completed on peak weeks.
• Overall backhaul performance has increased considerably leading to a smaller number of existing requests.

Background

Magdalene has been a key supplier to Openreach for several years, carrying out cabinet deployment, civils and upgrades on a regional basis; and exchange based work nationally. Previously working to trial innovative solutions including Turnkey Copper Ties (Civils optimisation), ECI Cabinet replacement, 10G link upgrades and ECI Fibre Big Bang live migration. In March 2021 Magdalene was awarded a 3 year Nationwide contract for DSLAM in-life capacity management and was selected as a single supplier to Openreach for this programme.

Openreach In Life Capacity

• Site survey and technical evaluation of the preferred expansion solution
• Cabinet/Sidepod deployment, copper, fibre and electrical connection
• Cabinet repair, re-shell, lock replacement, meter read and heat-exchange door replacement
• Civil enablement: duct installation, base installation, electrical work, fibre/ copper jointing and cabling.
• Cabinet card and backhaul expansion and upgrade
• Exchange optical hydra installation and test
• Out of hours cabinet upgrades
• Fibre optic find and fix service
• Exchange OLT installation and expansion

Key Facts

• 26,000 cabinet installations, upgrades and expansions over the past 2.5 years
• 21,000 activities forecast (21/22)
• 180 PMO & field engineers allocated to the project
• 2000 Cabinet Surveys (pa)
• 2000 out of hours Cabinet capacity expansions (pa)
• 3500 Fibre Backhaul upgrades

Overview

During 2020 Magdalene had been providing specialist services to Virgin Media to enable fibre connections to mobile cell site cabinets via ‘Turnkey’ and ‘Pokeout’ which combined Magdalene’s civil capabilities alongside their experience of building and maintaining mobile cell sites for the likes of MBNL and Vodafone. In order to expedite the connection process, Virgin Media issued the full 2021 build programme to Magdalene in order to identify civil requirements earlier and complete works on site.

Aspects of Delivery 

• Arrange access to sites including private landowners and asset management sites (Arqiva)
• Raise appropriate access permits and inform MBNL of issues identified on their sites.
• Survey cabinets for space for additional fibre equipment and duct entry requirements.
• Return survey document to Virgin Media for consideration and approval of further works
• If required, agree, arrange and schedule civils work nationally to add additional ducting capacity.

Key Facts

• National survey programme delivered in two months, one month ahead of schedule.
• 2000x surveys completed.
• 500x civils interventions completed.

Overview
In 2009, Geo (now Zayo) outsourced to Magdalene all of its Network Operations Centre Services that supported its UK and EU Networks and Customers. This was a long-standing contract where Geo entrusted Magdalene with support for its high-availability fibre network, 24/7, that provided the critical backbone infrastructure for their Tier 1 customers. This service was part of a larger managed service contract where Magdalene was also responsible for field engineering services in the UK. This was initially a 5-year contract (and extended by an additional year) which transferred to Zayo when Zayo acquired Geo in 2014. This contract has been further extended by an additional 4 year.

Key aspects of delivery
The Service over the term has incorporated a diverse range of functions Field Services with 3-hour To Site SLA in line with the strategic capability evolution of Zayo. These functions have included on a “white label” basis:

• Management of landlords, landowners
• Fibre provisioning
• Diversion schemes
• Network Monitoring
• Network operations centre
• Fault Management
• Field services
• Design, Build and Operate of dedicated customer networks
• Records management

Through strong relationships, technology capability, processes and a customer focussed culture, Magdalene supported and enabled the growth of Geo and continues to provide an effective and efficient operations capability for Zayo.

Overview
Orange Broadband was one of the original local loop un-bundlers having over 1500 DSLAMs across the UK. Magdalene had been a long term service partner installing over 50% of these DSLAMS in the construction phase of the network. The network also had over 20 PoP sites consisting of the Alcatel-Lucent 7750SR-12, SR-7 and ESS-7 MPLS Nodes.

Key areas of delivery
Magdalene were contracted to run a time critical 3 month project to meet landlord deadlines to:

• De-install all of the network assets from across the UK
• Make good all of the exchanges
• Recover all equipment and cabinets to a central location for resale/recycle/precious metal recovery
• Cherry pick high value items to be returned to the vendor for reuse
• Revenue recovery from the remaining assets

The timing of the work was particularly challenging as delays in the subscriber migration program meant that works had to be completed in mid-winter January through to March. Magdalene’s customer was able to achieve its targets for network migration and exit of key premises which underpinned their near-term business case. Not only did they achieve their timescales but a highly complex project was simplified and the return revenues quickly realised. This project has helped Magdalene form a long term relationship with its customer for the delivery of complex project.

Key client benefits

• Magdalene were able to deploy over 20 teams to ensure the project timescales were met
• All materials and equipment were fully accounted for on our online system
• Exceeded the clients revenue recovery target using international channels

Overview
Utility companies rely heavily on their critical telecommunications infrastructure. These private networks often interface with plant and equipment which is intended to last not just for years but for decades. Maintaining critical communications over this legacy equipment in the face of ever-changing network technologies is a task that utility companies are increasingly outsourcing to specialist providers such as Magdalene.

Key areas of delivery
In order to support its objectives for service delivery transformation and budget savings, Northern Ireland Water outsourced to Magdalene
the whole of their operational telecoms maintenance and site facilities management across Northern Ireland. By introducing a structured service delivery regime that aligned with the goals of the organisation, Magdalene was able to deliver savings at the same time as implementing network refreshes and introduce technology updates whilst maintaining “business as usual” operations in NIW’s
estate of over 100 sites across Northern Ireland.
The managed services that Magdalene provided NIW were:

• 24/7 network operations and service desk
• Telecom transmission field maintenance
• IP and voice network maintenance
• Network refresh, expansion and technology update capital projects
• Radio telemetry maintenance
• Tower maintenance and safe to climb certification
  

Key Client Benefits
As well as the financial savings achieved, NIW benefited from increased operational efficiencies and reporting functionality that helped it achieve its business KPIs and performance targets with key stakeholders.

Overview
Dedicated Network Partners Oy (DNWP) is one of the world’s leading critical communications solution providers. Magdalene is one of DNWP’s founding reseller partners providing both the iconic Dynanetand Connection Master “Multi-service” platforms in to the UK transport and utilities market.

Key aspects of delivery
As part of our strategic partnership, Magdalene provide a round-the clock Technical Assistance Centre service for DNWP’s Global Customer base. This 24/7 service provides critical support and remote engineering services to:

• International providers of critical national infrastructure
• Global reseller network
• Strategic OEM Partners

All Magdalene specialists are certified by DNWP to support the whole of its product portfolio. Our engineers will help diagnose customer faults, either directly or via the partner, and can escalate directly to R&D any software enquiries that are identified. Magdalene hosts a fully equipped DNWP test lab environment where it has all variants of hardware and software ready to replicate any customer issue. This facility can also be used for software release acceptance testing or for interactive customer engineer training.

Key Client Benefits
This Magdalene service benefits DNWP, its customer and its global channels by:

• Providing key support services to new territories and critical projects
• Supporting new global channels and business development activities
• Working synergistically with DNWP R&D to deliver Service Level Agreements

Overview
BT Managed Services provides a range of maintenance and operational services to Virgin Media, part of which is the management of the Virgin Media voice switch estate. One such switch site in Hammersmith required its 20,000 subscribers to be migrated to a geographically separate switch in Barnet as the Hammersmith switch environment was due to be decommissioned. The subscriber data including individual user active features required migrating during a minimal event window with parallel project works occurring to transfer the physical transmission connectivity.

Key Aspects of Delivery
The project overall comprised of a number of workstreams on the switch infrastructure, transmission networks and subscriber data.

• Barnet switch required capacity upgrades to accommodate the additional subscribers
• The transmission network required auditing and route preparation works for the change in the physical path connectivity
• The baseline subscriber data and associated subscriber/subscriber feature changes during the project required regular review to ensure changes fully captured prior to migration

Careful planning and rigorous testing was performed to ensure that data was accurately mapped between the donor and recipient switches and that the migration processes themselves ran smoothly within the migration window available. Through strong relationships and efficient working with BT, this project was successfully completed with Zero impact and no residual faults.

Key Client Benefits
Any network down-time or disruption could result in a customer wanting to switch networks in the competitive ISP/ Voice operator marketplace. Magdalene’s proven set of processes and tools which enable seamless and impact free subscriber migration removes the operational risks whilst maintaining customer satisfaction. As voice networks continue to evolve towards IP, Magdalene provides the complete solution to support operators in evolving their networks without adverse effects to their customers.

Optical Fibre Transmission Service

• Imperial Hospital Trust required a high capacity private network between its three London hospital sites.
• Magdalene worked closely with the technical teams on site to design and provision a DWDM optical network, initially providing a 100G connection between each location.
• This exponential increase in bandwidth over the previous infrastructure allowed for aggregation of services across the group and improved efficiencies between departments.
• The architecture of the DWDM network and flexibility of the Huawei WDM equipment used, allows for easy and rapid deployment of bandwidth upgrades as the need arises in the future.
• The solution has given the Trust a long term, scalable, secure and reliable network infrastructure which can grow as the needs of the hospitals dictate.