Broadband ISP connections on CityFibre’s UK full fibre (FTTP) network in Glasgow have been knocked offline after a potential fire caused damage to the operator’s local Fibre Exchange (FEX) last night, which took down their core link (gla1215). But unusually they’re having to pull in a specialist electrician from Portsmouth as they don’t have any in Scotland.
The outage, which affected 1,936 of the provider’s local FTTP customers, appears to have started around 11:30pm following an “alert regarding high temperatures” at the Glasgow FEX. The operator’s engineers soon identified a “potential fire hazard” and immediately engaged the fire brigade, which then isolated the heat source from the power supply and cut power to the unit (hence why the core link went down).
The fire brigade then proceeded to ventilate the area and worked to lower the temperature, so engineers could safely access the exchange site. But by 5am this morning it was determined that the site “remains unsafe” and needed to be assessed by a fully qualified electrical engineer before CityFibre’s team could conduct their work.
However, none of the engineers on-site were found to be “fully qualified to perform the necessary assumptions or restoration work” (i.e. they need to bypass the UPS power, which has been cut, while the main power to the FEX is currently still active), which meant that the operator is having to pull in a qualified electrical engineer from as far away as Portsmouth on the south coast of England.
CityFibre Service Status Update (5am)
The vendor’s engineers on-site are not fully qualified to perform the necessary assumptions or restoration work. It has been confirmed that while the UPS power has been cut, the mains power to the FEX is still active. To safely bypass the UPS power, a qualified electrical engineer is required.
Unfortunately, the vendor currently has no qualified electrical engineers available in the Scottish region. They have assigned the task to an engineer based in Portsmouth, with an estimated time of arrival of 9:30 AM. All escalation avenues have been set with the vendor. Updates to follow pending the arrival of the Electrical Engineer.
In fairness, you often can’t just pull in any old electrician for this sort of job, which requires familiarity with the setup being used. But it is perhaps a little bit surprising, for an operator of their size, that they didn’t have any “qualified electrical engineers available” across the whole of the Scottish region or nearer than Portsmouth. At this stage it’s not known when the issue will be fully rectified, but that should hopefully occur sometime today.
Such exchanges form a vital part of CityFibre’s effort to cover up to 8 million UK premises with their Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network – representing c.30% of the UK. So far, they’ve covered around 3.8m premises and have connected 400,000 customers (8th May 2024), but are also known to be hunting for fresh investment (here). We have asked CityFibre to comment on this outage.