The National Network Management Centre is the main national network operations centre of

BT Group BT Group plc ( trading as BT and formerly British Telecom) is a British multinational telecommunications holding company headquartered in London, England. It has operations in around 180 countries and is the largest provider of fixed-line, bro ...

, situated in

Shropshire Shropshire (; alternatively Salop; abbreviated in print only as Shrops; demonym Salopian ) is a landlocked historic county in the West Midlands region of England. It is bordered by Wales to the west and the English counties of Cheshire to ...

History

BT moved to the countryside site in the 1980s. The NMC is also known as the ''Customer Experience and Management Centre'', the ''International Network Management Centre'' (INMC), or the ''National Control Centre'' (NCC). The BT Global Media Network delivers television content around the world. BT Retail split into

BT Consumer BT Consumer is the main retail division of United Kingdom telecommunications company BT Group that provides fixed-line, mobile, broadband and digital television to consumers in the UK. It buys access to some of these services from BT's other d ...

and BT Business. The transformation of BT's network to becoming digital began in 1985, and finished in July 1990. BT's Worldwide Network Management Centre at Oswestry opened on 5 September 1990, at a cost of £4m. The site appeared on the BBC Two documentary ''Genius of Invention''.

Structure

It is situated on the A495, within a few hundred yards of the road's western terminus at the roundabout with the A5, in the west of the parish of Whittington. The site has a staff of around 440.

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, the former chief executive of

Plusnet Plusnet plc is a British triple play internet service provider (ISP); providing broadband, landline and mobile services. The company was founded in 1997 in Sheffield, England, and became a public limited company (plc) in July 2004 when it was f ...

, runs BT IT Services. There were originally two buildings - A and B. Building C was built to link these together and forms the hexagonal reception building. Building D was built to be the new Network Management Centre, which has now been superseded by the ''New Wave Building''.

Display screen

The site has a large display screen, built by Synelec (bought by

Planar Systems Planar Systems, Inc. is an American digital display manufacturing corporation with a facility in Hillsboro, Oregon. Founded in 1983 as a spin-off from Tektronix, it was the first U.S. manufacturer of electroluminescent (EL) digital displays. Planar ...

), made from 140 composite screens. The screen is ten feet high, and seventy feet wide.

Function

The site is the home of the UK's

speaking clock A speaking clock or talking clock is a live or recorded human voice service, usually accessed by telephone, that gives the correct time. The first telephone speaking clock service was introduced in France, in association with the Paris Observ ...

. BT IT Services, headquartered at Barlborough in

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on the A616, have a main operation in the building. It monitors

network traffic Network traffic or data traffic is the amount of data moving across a network at a given point of time. Network data in computer networks is mostly encapsulated in network packets, which provide the load in the network. Network traffic is the main c ...

on BT's network across the UK, including 0800, 0845 and

999 999 or triple nine most often refers to: * 999 (emergency telephone number), a telephone number for the emergency services in several countries * 999 (number), an integer * AD 999, a year * 999 BC, a year Books * ''999'' (anthology) or ''999: T ...

numbers. It monitors televotes provide by RIDE ( Recorded Information Distribution Equipment). RIDE is accessed via the

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protocol. At peak periods it implements call gapping load control.

BT Wholesale BT Wholesale and Ventures was a division of United Kingdom telecommunications company BT Group that provided voice, broadband, data, hosted communication, managed network and IT services to communications providers (CPs) in Great Britain. It was ...

controls its traffic from the site. Every two minutes the site contacts around 700 of BT's telephone exchanges to find out how busy they are. 80% of BT's network consists of optical fibre.

References

External links