National Network Management Centre

The National Network Management Centre is the main national network operations centre of BT Group, situated in Shropshire.

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 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. Jamie Ford, the former chief executive of Plusnet, 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 Building D was built to be the new Network Management Centre, which has now been superseded by the New Wave Building.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), 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. BT IT Services, headquartered at Barlborough in Derbyshire on the A616, have a main operation in the building.

It monitors network traffic on BT's network across the UK, including 0800, 0845 and 999 numbers. It monitors televotes provide by RIDE (Recorded Information Distribution Equipment). RIDE is accessed via the SOAP protocol.

At peak periods it implements call gapping load control. BT Wholesale 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.