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Major UK Comms Backbone Bunker Burned Out
evilandi writes "The BBC are reporting that much of Manchester, England is without telephone service following a fire in a major underground tunnel system. The site in question is strongly suspected to be the 'Guardian' nuclear communications bunker system which is one of the main three UK subterranean communications backbone bunkers. The giveaway is this regional BBC news story which mentions Chapel Street, one of the very few entrance/exit points to the 'Guardian' system. If confirmed, Manchester could be without wired communications for some time. The MANAP Manchester Network Access Point regional Internet hub is officially reporting nothing, but a number of UK admins are seeing significant disruption."
Manchester has a population comfortably in excess of 1 Million people and a large buisness centre. 100K dead telephones represents only a small but significant amount of the city.
It's interesting, and not surprising, to see a Duncan Campbell byline on the research. Duncan became well-known in the mid-90s for doing the journalistic work to publicize the NSA's Echelon wiretapping-the-world system. http://www.gn.apc.org/duncan/ has some older articles of his.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
This tunnel was described on our regional BBC tv news as a 'secret conduit between Manchester and Salford built during the cold war to safeguard communications'. I quote roughly. They also mentioned that it was 40 metres down.
All this was accompanied by some very Dr Strangelove images of corrugated tunnels and antiquated switchgear, a smooth man from British Telecom (who seemed very calm for someone whose secret underground nuclear bunker was on fire) and the sad beeping of disconnected call centre workers trying to close deals with each other.
BT and vodaphone are down, Sporadic towns as far out as chapel-en-le-frith are out, internet is out, 50 firemen were in the tunnel at one point, and I think a 6kv line was involved. Fortunately my Aunt lives far enough out to still have a phone :D
I am one of many. My idea is not unique, nor do I expect my voice alone to sway you. I speak in a chorus of opinion.
This morning I got I text message from my boss about the problem and left for work after seeing that my own home ADSL connection was ok. I arrived at work to find that we had no phones (other than mobiles) and the our leased line was dead. We got phones back around 1pm but the leased line was still AWOL when I left work at around 6pm.
I visited the site of the fire (well, the ground above the site!) at lunch time, and the streets were still full of fire engines and other emergency services.
I'm told by our ISP that they are unsure of the extent of the damage but hope to get things back by tomorrow. I left a cronjob running that should mail me here every hour and so far I've heard nothing from it, so I suspect tomorrow will be spent getting colocated facilities activated.
EMERGENCY services, homes and businesses were hit after an underground fire in Manchester city centre cut 130,000 phone lines.
The blaze, in a tunnel by the junction of George Street and Princess Street, destroyed cables connected to the national phone network.
Related News:
No time limit for Manchester phone lines fix
Fire wipes out internet in Manchester
BT tunnel fire cuts off Manchester phone lines
BT fire disrupts emergency services
Businesses hit by BT fire
Phones Out of Action after Fire in Tunnel
Tunnel fire knocks out phone network
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No, I think you will find it's one of the places where the industrial revolution started.
I must ask - WHERE IS THE REDUNDANCY. Everyone with any sense knows you do not have a critical hub like that without having geographically seperate backup.
Edinburgh and London are the backups, according to what a friend of mine once told me.
This friend was one who worked on pulling out the last analogue switching units from that particular underground exchange. He had a tape of the sound the analogue exchange made before they pulled it out too... 'twas fascinating.
Right now, most calls are bypassing Manchester, and going to the other two main trunk stations - and if you're calling from Birmingham, you're probably going through Edinburgh to get to your destination.
Coming soon - pyrogyra
Far from being the backward place you believe it to be Manchester was one of the birthplaces of the Industrial Revolution; one end of one of the earliest Railway systems in the world (the Liverpool to Manchester for which speed trials were held where Stephenson's Rocket won); and the birthplace of digital stored program computers.
I live near the site of the fire, I work for a telco and yet the most significant disruption I've seen to my life was the traffic around Manchester City Centre!
No, I don't want a free iPod
Asbestos isn't manufactured, it's mined: it's a fibrous mineral and totally combustion-proof. It's wholly impossible for asbestos to result from burning wire jacket unless the asbestos was there to begin with. Unless the building has very old, very illegal electrical wiring, there was no asbestos. Now, it is possible that there was some asbestos insulation in the cable ducting that went unnoticed and he meant "we inhaled unknown quantities of: (asbestos) and (crap from burning wire insulation)".
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.