Examination of witnesses (Questions 320
- 339)
TUESDAY 19 DECEMBER (AFTERNOON) 2001
SIR PETER
BONFIELD, MR
COLIN GREEN
and MR IAN
MORFETT
Mr Butterfill
320. Sir Peter, on a purely practical note,
there are quite a lot of works that need to be done to facilitate
LLU within a lot of these sites, are there not? There is improvement
to the ventilation, new security arrangements and all that sort
of thing, perhaps putting up divisions between what you are going
to have and what somebody else is going to occupy. What sorts
of steps have you taken to achieve this? Have you tried to facilitate
it?
(Sir Peter Bonfield) Yes. The best way to think of
this is primarily logistics around a building site. It is making
sure that the space is available, making sure that the design
is what our customers want, and there was some extensive discussion
during the summer on whether they wanted their own sites, whether
they would share sites, how much space would be available and
that sort of thing. We have been increasing the number of people
we have in our planning operations. We think we will have to hire
an additional 600 people in the early part of next year and maybe
up to 2000 during the balance of next year. So this is a huge
logistic operation for us which we geared up essentially through
the previous timescale, which we agreed with Oftel in April, and
now we are responding to the new requirement to bring it all forward
six months, which means that we have got to accelerate some of
that hiring, so we have doubled the number of planners over the
last four months.
321. There have been suggestions from some of
the other operators that you have been deliberately difficult
about this and put in requirements that are not entirely necessary
and the other suggestion they have made is that to some extent
you have been gilding the lily, in other words you have said you
will need new security systems where you did not have any before,
and really you are trying to use their participation to upgrade
your own buildings. Is that right?
(Sir Peter Bonfield) I do not think it is. If we look
at the overall situation, as the Chairman said, were we initially
gung-ho to embrace LLU until it was a licence condition change?
I think the answer was probably not because we thought the previous
approach was better because there would be infrastructure competition.
However, having agreed that at board level, we then went ahead
to implement it in a professional way, and right in the middle
of that it has been brought forward six months which is a big
logistics exercise. Have we got everything perfectly right in
all exchanges? I would not, hand on heart, say so. Are our people
working as professionally as they can now to say these are the
issues case-by-case exchange-by-exchange? I think, by and large,
they are, but it is complicated. If there are particular concerns
on each exchange we are open to working with the industry, as
Ian has said. We have got consultations set up with them to ask
what are the issues. By and large, I think the key understanding
of it is that these are relatively straightforward logistic issues.
This is not a big technical problem and I do not think we are
being obstructive. We are trying to make sure that it does work
in a professional way.
322. Some of the evidence we had this morning
has been reported and some operators say at the present rate of
progress it is going to take them 30 years to achieve your rate
of rolling out.
(Sir Peter Bonfield) I do not think that would be
the case. The programme that we have got agreed with Oftel and
the DTI would essentially set up 190 co-location exchanges by
mid next year with another 410 distant co-locations. That is 600
exchanges and it is a very, very fast roll out and the expectation
is then it might go up to 1,000 exchanges within the next six
to nine months depending on the demand.
323. So are you confident that you have got
the resources in place to meet the new timetable?
(Sir Peter Bonfield) I am not confident we have got
all the resources in place. I am confident that we have got the
plans in place but we will need the resource to be able to do
it. This will need a big hiring programme from BT, but we must
work in tandem with the industry. It is not something we can do
by ourselves. We have to work together, because certainly some
of these situations, particularly in distant co-location, do need
the other operators to work in conjunction with us to get the
optimum result.
324. Why would you need to hire people? You
would not want all these people in-house permanently. Is this
not something you can contract out?
(Sir Peter Bonfield) We need to hire planners on a
pretty long-term basis because this is not going to go away. Some
of the people will be on temporary contracts. Some of the people
we will have to hire because our expectation is that some of our
customers will not want to employ people themselves, they will
want us to do it for them, in which case we will have to hire
the staff.
325. I would have thought you would have out-sourced
because this is largely a one-off operation. This is not going
to be on-going indefinitely.
(Sir Peter Bonfield) It is not something you can out-source
very easily. Each of the exchanges is different, as the Chairman
has seen. We do need planning people in and people in to do it.
Some of it will be contracted on a short-term basis, but not all
of it.
Mr Morgan
326. You mentioned a figure of 2,000 jobs. Are
people with the requisite skills available? That is presumably
a substantial number.
(Sir Peter Bonfield) This is a substantial programme.
We should not under-estimate the scale of the commitment that
we are making. We have got to make sure the planning is right,
the installation is right, and that we set these things up correctly.
Some of the customers will want us to put in the equipment and
some of the customers will want us to maintain the equipment and
then we have got to re-set the lines as they grow. It then depends
on the take-up of the offer.
327. Where are these 2,000 people with the requisite
skills now? Are they hanging around waiting to be phoned by you?
(Sir Peter Bonfield) We do have a large catchment
area of people in this country and we can skill some of them ourselves.
We are hiring continually a lot of people because our attrition
rate is relatively high; we are a large business. We are used
to taking people on at that level but it will not be easy. We
are going to do a lot of in-house training. We are working with
our union colleagues at the moment to make sure we are doing it
in an optimum way between full-time people, agency people and
some other contract people.
Mr Butterfill
328. If you look at other large organisations
which have a bigger stake portfolio dotted around the country,
most of the national multiple retailers are in a similar position
to you, and they out-source it all. They would not dream of having
people on their staff.
(Sir Peter Bonfield) We are responsible for this;
we cannot out-source it. Are we going to bring all those 2,000
people onto our direct payroll? Probably not.
329. I am relieved to hear it for your shareholders.
(Sir Peter Bonfield) At any one time we have at least
3,000 contractors working in BT.
Chairman
330. Do you think some of the people you paid
off might get back on the payroll?
(Sir Peter Bonfield) I do not think they will come
back on the payroll but they might be there in terms of some added
skills.
Mr Chope
331. Can I ask you a bit more about the numbers.
You referred to the possibility of 1,000 being done in a year
and the figure of 190 and 410 making a total of 600 being done
within six months. We are a bit confused because Oftel announced
that there were 360 sites selected in the second round of bidding
in their latest press notice and that is in addition to the sites
in the first. We make that to be a total which is rather different
from yours.
(Sir Peter Bonfield) What I am saying is that there
are 600 exchanges which will be available in terms of distant
co-location and physical co-location by July of next year. That
includes some of the second bow-wave type of exchanges. My estimate
is that it might go up to 1,000 exchanges within the back end
of next year early part of the 2002. That includes the first bow-wave,
which is 380, and then the 360 in the second bow-wave, but they
will overlap with each other.
332. There will be some more beyond that?
(Sir Peter Bonfield) I am not sure. In July the industry
said they wanted potentially 1,000 exchanges, in September they
said it wanted 2,000 exchanges, now it is December, and I am not
quite sure what it will end up with. It appears to be somewhere
around 1,000 exchanges probably.
333. We understand that around 120 surveys have
taken place in you exchanges where you expect high demand. Are
these the top 120 from the Electoral Reform Society list?
(Sir Peter Bonfield) The first bow-wave process is
conducted by Oftel. We are not involved in the allocation, but
we thought we would look at the top 120 that came from that list
and do a pre-look at availability of space planning, and that
is what we have taken on essentially on our behalf and that is
what we are now working with the industry on, driven by Ian and
his people.
334. So you have made quick progress on those.
You have surveyed them, they are obviously popular; what is holding
up the unbundling?
(Sir Peter Bonfield) The process of bow-wave one and
bow-wave two is being conducted by Oftel. So they allocate the
sites, they allocate who is going to go into those sites, and
we discharge against that allocation. The allocation is not done
by BT.
335. Have you got the impression that there
is not such great demand for some of these sites?
(Sir Peter Bonfield) In all of these things, as we
have said before, there will be large demand for some city sites
and less demand for other sites and that is the process Oftel
is working on. We tried to work with the industry during the summer
to work out a co-ordinated approach. To be quite honest, the industry
found it difficult to come to a consensus among themselves so
the process was taken over by Oftel.
336. How many exchange sites have had surveys
done at the request of the operators?
(Mr Morfett) Of the first bow-wave which Oftel set
for 380, 78 per cent of those were available with enough space
for the operators that wanted to go in and we received 178 requests
for surveys and we have done those and moved forward on the vast
majority of them to design rooms, the design of 25 of which have
been completed and been passed to the operators. The rest will
be coming over the next two to three months.
337. So those 178 are in addition to the 120?
(Mr Morfett) Yes, the 178 are part of the 361 that
Oftel started with, and I have to say are probably not the highest
priority in the way that their system operated. We thought, given
that the operators were crying out for some other exchanges, for
those that they thought were more important to them we would take
the top 120 off the priority list and do a survey. We have not
taken them all the way to the design of a room, we have simply
had a look at the exchanges and said "yes, there is room
in these exchanges for this number of operators, these others
will need some looking at". Again, the news is good. Of that
120, 64 per cent have enough room for as many operators as want
to go in and the next is 24 per cent need a little bit of jiggling
but you could still get a lot of operators into them once you
have had a look at them.
(Sir Peter Bonfield) But there will still be a need
for allocation.
338. When will the operators actually have to
put their money where their mouth is?
(Mr Morfett) They have been asked in bow-wave two
to put their money where their mouth is and they are thinking
about that at the moment.
(Sir Peter Bonfield) By and large it will be in the
early part of next year that they will have the sites available.
The trial sites are available now and they will have the 190 building
out into next year in terms of the physical co-location and the
distant co-location. To meet the timescale they have said the
industry must have pre-committed the equipment or they will not
meet the timescale.
339. Sandy Walkington very kindly took me down
to BT's exchange in Christchurch on Friday and that is in the
first bow-wave and certainly we were told there were six expressions
of interest there and no physical problem on the site. How soon
will those six potential operators have to decide whether or not
they wish to go ahead at Christchurch?
(Sir Peter Bonfield) I think they have got to really
decide over the next month or two at the maximum. In fact, they
probably should have decided already because the biggest issue
is lead time on equipment once this ball gets rolling, not even
on the physical layout of the co-location space.
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