Published Sun, 13 Apr 2008 17:02:00 +0000
A quick update on where things are and what is happening over the next
three months at A&A.

Now:-
Firstly, we have the new pipe to BT. BT have not quite got their end of
the link ready yet so we have not been able to test, but this is
literally any day now. There are now 2 gigabit fibre links to BT in
Telehouse North.

We have the link from Telehouse North to our existing setup elsewhere
in Docklands. That is also nearly ready. Should have been working on
Friday but not quite yet. Hopefully Monday. This is so we can run both
operations as one and migrate from one site to another seamlessly.

This month:-
We should have initial testing and trial ADSL2+ users this month. The
exchanges start being upgraded from now and so we can take on more and
more ADSL2+ customers over the next three months. Initially we are
running this as a trial. We hope this will help reduce load on our
existing services.

Over the next three months:-
We finally have new production FB6000 platform hardware for our faster
routers, which I know is about a year later than we hoped. These are
being finallised and over the next three months and will be deployed in
various stages (alpha and beta testing first). Once we have these in
use for ADSL2+ services we will make the ADSL2+ a normal service rather
than just a trial. In practice this distinction makes little
difference. We also have to have the new ordering systems interface to
BT in place for this.

We are also setting up new peering links in Telehouse North with LINX
and LONAP as well as new transit links. Over the next three months we
are migrating various connectivity (for all customers) to the new data
centre. This too should be seamless.

We are also looking at slight changes to the way we do usage based
billing, allowing under usage carry over for example. This is likely to
happen in the next three months.

Over these three months our costs are considerably higher as we have
our 155M pipes as well as the new gigabit links to BT.

Finally, in around three months:-
At some point in around three months BT will launch what they call
"IPStream connect" which is when we can "switch" all existing broadband
uses to our new gigabit links to BT. We are asking them to do this
sooner if we can, but do not expect it. This is when we can finally
turn off the more expensive 155M pipes we have to BT. This then gives
us a saving in some of our direct BT costs of around 10%. The new pipes
will not have the same issues with load as the 155M pipes. At this
point we aim to lower our main prices for broadband as well as
marketing our services more.

Obviously these plans are subject to change, and very subject to BT.
They are also subject to a lot of work in our R&D department on the
next generation high speed FB6000 routers we will be deploying.

Any questions, please do ask me in irc. Happy to discuss.

Adrian, director.
See http://aaisp-planned.blogspot.com/2008/04/next-3-months.html