End of Day: 25th September

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Regular readers might well imagine how we're feeling today.  It's very busy across all of the business, in particular responding to a huge amount of feedback we've had for the ‘cease' charge we've had to introduce. Networks has also been busy sorting out a ‘dropped pipe' making adjustments to the traffic profiles and (not all bad news) increasing central capacity or as we like to call it ‘lighting up a new segment'.   Carl gives us the low down: Today has been busy with the problem on the IPStream Central known as THN-AG3. As I'm writing this Sarah from the operations team is preparing to revert to the previous software version as our supplier has confirmed that the cause of the problem is an unknown software defect in the version we upgraded to on Wednesday morning. The rest of the operations team has been dealing with other problems and customer tickets that have been escalated from our CSC team. The development team has continued to work on projects which include consolidation and decommissioning work. The DBA guys have been working on future changes to the design of our VMBU system and usage charging system and creating some tools relating to the recent changes to cessation charges.   Chris at Comms central reports in: Bob has been doing a leeeetle beet of forum posting whilst looking at problems. He hasn't been as angry today; in fact he's been an absolute ray of sunshine on an otherwise abysmal day.  Matt's been teaching old dogs new tricks. He's been looking at problems too, all the change controls in the world, hanging around forums and doing some tasks. I've been handling service status posts and other Comms for the gateway problem. In between that I've been performing various challenges, Crystal Maze stylee and have collected 126 gold tickets.  James hasn't been seen near the Comms desk all day, we think it's Bob's new deodorant. He's been spotted around Watford Gap and also in the forums. Cheers for now, here's something to keep you entertained until tomorrow.   Oh now look.  A first time EOD-er.. Hi, my name's Kev and it's my first time writing the community EOD so be nice (you'll be lucky - Ed) I work on the cancellations team, we are a fairly small team and are all looking to help put customers on the best packages that we can for them or generate MAC keys and cancel accounts if they want to leave us. We have all been busy, especially Joe who always seems to be making tea and coffee for everyone whenever he stands up.  Which is really good since most of the team tend not to function without drinks, so naturally he is being praised for his tea making abilities. Sally has been focusing on helping our business customers whenever they call in and today we have the pleasure of Damien and Laura helping us out. Our table has recently been covered in bottles of beer (I think I should point out that these were unopened and taken home for consumption - Ed) as the team won a competition for the highest percentage over target, which we are all very happy with being given. Team spirit is fairly high at the moment and we are all doing our best to help customers onto the best packages for them. I would put some more on here, but it's my turn to make the drinks....   Rys down the stairs in Dev grabs the mic: It's been business as usual down here in Dev today, although there's a whiff of change in the air, as some of new Director Fletch's changes are starting to kick in. It'll mean some team reshuffles, new responsibilities, new opportunity and a nice point of reflection for the department to put some things to bed and get stuck in to the new. We're at a fairly nice point too with the major projects just now, where they're all about to wind down, either completely or just the end of their current phase. That lets us draw a line under things, make some changes, then get cracking again with new enthusiasm. And we need it, since it's been a tough couple of quarters recently, and the run up to April is key. Wish us luck. Daily goings on include Ben Spencer giving true iterative TDD a go (sounds painful - Ed) for some code, and Matt Hibberd on his penultimate day at Plusnet before disappearing with his missus to Calgary for a new start. We'll miss you, dude!   And finally for today, here's Dave giving us his thoughts: A mixed day in the Product team today. We've been fielding questions and helping out our colleagues in other parts of the business regarding the cessation charge. For those customers that have yet to receive the email, BT Wholesale has introduced a charge to ISPs whenever they ‘cease' a customer's broadband service. So, if one of our customers moves house, or cancels their broadband service (rather than migrate), we get charged this fee. With the tight margins we operate in unfortunately we have to pass this charge on to our customers, at £15.75 plus VAT each time.  You can easily see how quickly that can mount up. Not a nice decision that we've had to make but unfortunately one we had to, or risk quickly seeing our costs spiral out of control. We've also been involved with the P1 problem with one of our ADSL gateways. With the reduced capacity on the network we had to make a few tweaks to the traffic management systems to ensure that customers' interactive traffic performed as it should. Customers should now be reconnecting to that gateway so with the added capacity that came on line the bumpy ride should be a little less bumpy. In other news our TR-069 trial is going well, from plugging in a router to it being online and connected with the customer's username and password without the customer needing enter anything in the router is taking about 2-3 minutes. Hopefully the next setup guides we'll be sending out will consist of "plug the router in, go and make a cup tea and when you get back it will be connected". And lastly for today from products a quick shout out about our 21CN/ADSL2+ trial. We've been babysitting our first staff orders over the last couple of days and we're hopeful they have gone live this afternoon. Just waiting for the guys to get home and give it a try.   Excellent updates all. Still too much tea if you ask me but there we go.  Dear Reader, I'm off home now.. to get my tea. P-j