Openreach PIA and its significance to the UK fiber broadband industry.

Hello everyone and welcome to this edition of Network IQ. And the topic we want to discuss today is about the OpenReach PIA interface, the physical infrastructure access interface from OpenReach. And we have a really special guest with us today. That's Dr. Jillian Kendricks. She's the CEO at RealWorld based here in the UK. Hello, Jillian. Thank you for joining us. Hi, Steve. I'm really, it's a special week for me because we spent some time together at the IQGeo AMIA meetup in Cambridge this week. And now I get to spend some more time with you talking about PIA. So it's, you're making my week. Always a pleasure, Steve. Always a pleasure. Yeah. So PIA, you and your team have been involved with PIA deployments for quite some time. And you've done quite a few of them, really making you an expert on the subject. But for those of us that are less familiar with the topic, could you start by just giving us a little bit of background about PIA and its significance to the UK fibre broadband industry? Yes, of course, Steve. So PIA started life in about 2002, which is a long time ago. And at that time, it was called Duckton Pole Access. And it was an obligation that the UK regulator put upon, it was BT at the time, it's now OpenReach because they split up. But it was an obligation that was put on them to say, okay, if people are rolling out fibre, we want to make it a playing, a level playing field. So we want to give other operators the access to the BT infrastructure, because rolling out through existing infrastructure is faster, it's cheaper, and it's less disruptive. It means you don't have to keep digging up the roads. So basically, the initiative was there that if you were somebody who was going to roll out fibre, you are going to be allowed to have access to OpenReach's infrastructure to do it. And so it started off in life as just saying you had access to it, which meant that you go out and lift up chamberlids and see what was inside it. But then they really accelerated it in about 2017. That's when OpenReach provided, first of all, a manual portal, where you could go in and you could go navigate to an area that you were interested in. And you could download the data for that area. So you could find out all the ducts, all the poles, and all the holes. So that's chambers and manholes and so on. So you could pull that back. And also, you could then do the rest of the process. Because if you're going to use the OpenReach infrastructure, you don't just need to know where it is. You have to let them know that you want to use it. You have to say where you're going to be working. That's called a whereabouts. And then once you finish the job, you have to tell them what you did so that they can then bill you, which is your build complete. So they gave a manual access to it. And then they've enhanced it even further, which is great resource that OpenReach has provided. They've provided a series of APIs, which you can connect to, which means that directly, someone who's planning can say, I need to know about that data. And they can automatically pull it from the portal and integrate it into their systems. So that's what PIA is about. It's enabling altnets, as they're called in the UK, alternative network providers, to use BT OpenReach's assets to roll out their fiber network. As you've described it, it's fairly complicated and necessarily so. There are a lot of kind of players in this, including your own organization and the operators. What is the role of a network management software vendor like IQgeo in this process? How do we play? Okay. So with any form of fiber rollout, you need a lot of good data to bring into it in order to help plan. And in the UK, one of those sources is the OpenReach data, but it's not the only one. You also need to pull together multiple different data sources, like where are the addresses I'm going to build to, things like Wayleaves. And it's complicated. There's a lot of data, and you have to try and get your plan done accurately and quickly. So you need tools which can help you manage all that data. That's where inventory platforms come in, like the IQgeo Network Manager. But also, you can then really speed up the planning process using automated planning tools, such as Comsof Fiber. So if you have all of this data to hand, you can then really speed up the ability to plan where you want to go. And if you have integrated systems which you can take out into the field to support survey, that really helps again because you have one set of data you can be working from. You can then take that through to the build, and you can actually document what you've got. So you have a complete consolidated record of what you're planning and building. And you can then start to automate on top of that so that you can automate where you need to build and sequence your build and all that sort of stuff. So having a powerful platform underneath you which can help you manage your plan, design, and build is absolutely fundamental to getting this going. And let alone if you don't have that, you can maybe manage to build without all of that. But if you then go on to operate your network and you want to automate sales and so on, unless you've got a complete inventory record, which is a good digital platform, you've really tied one hand behind your back and hobbled your legs. So it's absolutely fundamental. Yeah, it's really interesting that you say that because people might think of PIA as being mostly about the front end of that lifecycle. It's about the planning and rollout perhaps. But really, it impacts the whole lifecycle. That's right. After you've rolled it out, you still have to continuously pay for the bits you're using. So if you're operating and you shift and you don't know what you're paying for, you can be overpaying or underpaying, both of which are bad. Because if you don't pay for something you're using, OpenReach has the right to pull your network out. So that's a bad thing. But also, you might be overpaying because you might be billed for things that you no longer use. So absolutely fundamental all the way through. Yeah, definitely. But so, again, you've done a number of these deployments with operators in the UK. What is the biggest challenge that they face when using the PIA environment for their fiber rollout and operations? Yeah, well, there's a few. One of the first ones is really to do with the fact that OpenReach's data isn't perfect. Now, that's no criticism of OpenReach. I think you'd find it very difficult to find any established operator who's got a complete set of records in their system, which are without fault. That would be a difficult thing to achieve. So, I mean, OpenReach has been running for almost 100 years or maybe more. So what you'll find is you're a new provider and you want to get service somewhere. So you pull the data and there are bits missing. If you go out and you walk around, you'll see that there are actually BT assets in the ground, but they're not in the OpenReach data. So in that case, you have a problem because you've then got to ask them to backfill it and then you've got to pull all the data sources together. So that's tricky. And there's another problem which can go on. And this happens a lot if you're in an area where there's a thing called overbuild. Overbuild is where more than one operator is building in the same area. Now, what can happen is if you go out and do a survey and you find, oh, that pole's in the wrong place. It's on the other side of the road or this chamber doesn't exist or it's 200 meters in the wrong place. You can go and ask OpenReach to do a thing which is network adjustment where they go and improve the data in that area. That's great. The data gets better. But imagine the scenario where you pull the data. Three months later, you're getting ready to build. But in the interim, OpenReach have gone and fixed it. Your data doesn't match up with what's in their record anymore. So when you go off to do the thing which is called an NOI, which is where you say, these are the things I want to survey or build in, they don't exist anymore or they've moved or something. So trying to keep track of data which shifts in a way which you're not updated on is a challenge. So you have to have the ability to re-request data, look for differences, alert the planners or the builders that the data has shifted over and above what they're doing. That's a really key part to getting things right. Now, one of the other things with the data is it can be in the right place. But OpenReach also give you information on ducts, which is called a RAG status. RAG is red, amber, green. And basically it's telling you this asset you can probably use. So the reason you might not be able to use something, for example, if it's duct, they might know that it's blocked. Or they might know that the manhole has been silted up. Or if it's a pole, they might know it's defective. They're called depoles. And that could be it's rotten or something of that sort, which means it's dangerous to use. You have to know this information. It's health and safety critical for depoles. But for the rest of it, the RAG status is a great indicator, but it is not reliable, unfortunately, in the OpenReach data. It's another thing. They don't always get it right. They might say you can't use this duct, but you can. Or they might say you can use this one, and you can't. So the challenges of keeping up to speed with all of that are significant. And if you find something that's wrong in the network, you're duty bound to report it. It's a thing called an A55 is the form or the submission you make, which is to say this duct is blocked. Managing those is difficult. Asking people to clear them for you, knowing where they've been cleared, and keeping track of it all, because it's very complex the way you have to manage it. If you say you're going to use a piece of network, but it's got an A55 on it, you're not actually allowed to say you've completed your build until it's all been tidied up. So there's an awful lot of management and organization involved in all of this. Well, it does sound complicated, but there must be benefits as well. So what would you say are the greatest benefits to the operators, and how can they really maximize the investment they've made in PIA and a PIA integration? Well, the benefits are huge. Almost all of the alternative network providers, and there's 130 of them thereabouts, currently registered to use OpenReach infrastructure. So that's a lot of people. Each of them also probably has a plan to build 10 million homes. So you can tell there's a lot of overbuild going on in the UK at the moment. But so what are the benefits? Well, as I said in the first place, the benefit which the regulator thought would be realized, which is you can roll out faster, cheaper, and with less disruption. All of those things are true. You can, so most altnets that are working, certainly in urban areas, will expect to roll out at least 80% of their network, if not over 90%, or some aim for 100% of their build will go through OpenReach assets. That's a huge percentage, isn't it? Yeah. It's a huge percentage. You do have to pay for putting your stuff in the network, but the cost of that is much less than building and maintaining your own structure. And the speed and the access to market is the big win. So what are the things? Being able to integrate to the APIs means that the moment that you can pull the data really quickly in order to, first of all, check whether or not the area is going to be suitable for build. Because you can correlate with lots of other different data sources in order to figure out, is it going to be cost-effective for me to roll out here? So that's your first benefit. Your second one is by integrating and able to pull the data and make sure you're keeping it up to date. You're really getting rid of a lot of those problems that you might hit further down the line if you're not using the integration. If you can pull that data, keep your stuff up to date. If you can catch a problem early on in the process that something's disappeared you wanted to use, it will save you money because fixing problems in network build and design later is always a bad thing. And all the way through the process, having this ability to integrate and automate the process is really going to speed things up. So here's an example. One of the alt-nets we're working with got themselves into a situation where they'd been focusing on build, but not on build complete. Build complete is where you tell Openreach that you've done something. They ended up with a situation where they had 400 build completes that they had to submit. You've only got a certain amount of time from saying you're going to use something to saying that you've finished the build. You've only, in general, got a year. If they didn't get those in, they were in big trouble because, as I say, Openreach can pull the network back out again. They had 400 to complete, and doing it manually was going to take them at least half a day per build complete. That's 200 man days. That's always the man years of effort. So you either had to recruit in a whole bunch of people in order to get these things through, or if you automate it, you can get it done like that. So the benefits for adding automation on all of this are enormously strong. They increase your ability to do throughput. They mean you don't get bottlenecks. Well, when you're working in an environment like this where there's so much process that needs to be properly completed, that if there's opportunity for automation, that can make an enormous difference, can't it? Indeed. Automation all the way through. Automation pulling the data, automation in the planning process. So if you can speed up the automation of the planning, you reduce timescales. If you can speed up the return, taking it out for survey, for builds, getting all the data, having it just entering it once as opposed to having to keep moving it between systems, the benefits are enormous. And then what that then translates into having a complete record, which means that you can then automate marketing and sales. And that, of course, is the big win. Getting to readiness for service early, RFS, is the goal of all alt nets. Time to revenue. Thank you. Well, it's a fascinating topic. And thank you so much for taking a few minutes of your time today, Jillian, to go through it with us. As I said, you and your real-world team are experts on the subject. And so I'm sure people can reach out to you if they have further questions on PIA. But I really appreciate your time. And thank you so much for joining us on Network IQ today. That's my pleasure. Thanks, Steve. See you soon. See you.