A Level Computer Scientists Visit Adastral Park!
January 16, 2025
Our A Level Computer Scientists joined Mrs Brown and Mr Jenkins at Adastral Park, near Ipswich for a work insights day with BT. The first stop was in the Openreach Labs where the pupils spoke with BT engineers and got hands on experience with the differences between fibre optic and copper cables, installing new networks, home routers and hubs, telegraph pole maintenance and the working life of a network telecoms engineer. The pupils were able to ask some searching questions about the realities beyond the end user of networks.
Next up was the Network Operations Centre (NOC) where the pupils saw a massive live screen simulations of the whole BT network in real time, with current outages and live testing locations shown on a UK map. This is the first time we have been allowed in this nerve centre. The pupils were very interested when the managers spoke about how new video games downloads on release days combined with live football match streaming can stress the network, but it never get near the national maximum capacity. This was a very visual way of seeing how the network is managed, problems mitigated, and diagnostics employed.
The Technology Showcases were jam-packed with new technologies and leading-edge concepts in situ. They are a great way to show developing technology in action and to test fresh ideas in mock up scenarios. This year, we got demonstrations in The Street, The Hospital, The Office, The Smart City and The Server Room. Who said “never mix electronics with liquids?”.
The Street represents a typical UK high street with a mixture of green cabinets and telegraph poles. We found out more about how the research team lead innovation in faster connections over both fibre infrastructure and the old copper network. The Hospital showcase had a number of innovations in Primary Care, Inpatient, Community and Social Care and Diagnostics. We saw camera vision, 3D mixed reality and even holograms. The Smart Cities showed us how 5G and IoT are enabling new and exciting things and with over 50 billion IoT devices predicted to be connected, insight way gained the potential from all this remotely connected data.
The final session was entitled the Path of an IP Packet and delivered by a Head Network Architect. This combined all the aspects of the day to help summaries and draw conclusions in readiness for those dreaded A Level essay questions!
An excellent day was had by all and a big “thank you” to the Insights Team at BT for a stimulating day.






