Engineers at work: the politics and practices of transforming the UK's internet infrastructure

My ethnographic research will follow changing conditions for the engineers involved in a planned upgrade to increase the speed and capacity of the UK's telecommunications network. The research will examine what these infrastructure workers produce, how they produce it, and the perspectives they have on bringing greater connectivity to society. The research will be conducted in collaboration with the Greater London Combined branch of the Communication Workers Union's (CWU), which organises some of these engineers. It will track the union's intervention into the upgrading project as the pressures of new modes of work regulation and co-ordination are felt. The overall aim is to assess the socio-economic roles of the often invisible labours which maintain and renew a complex network, as it comes under significant political scrutiny.
Although fibre makes up most of the UK network, only 2% can be designated the "Fibre to the Premises" (FTTP) required for ultra-fast internet and "ubiquitous connectivity". Yet the government's industry watchdog Ofcom, and many telecoms businesses, claim extensive FTTP is essential to deliver the ultra-fast, high-data capacity network which can match the future needs of consumers, businesses, and public services, including big data applications, cloud computing, the "Internet of Things" and automation of work.
Yet at the heart of the upgrade is a challenging task for telecommunications in any urban area - replacing copper wiring, and threading fibre optic cables through the "local loop", under pavements and roads, from local telephone exchanges and directly into homes and businesses. This is one reason why former state monopoly BT, who through their subsidiary Openreach retain responsibility for most of the UK's "local loop", says "good enough" speeds and data capacity can be obtained without nationwide FTTP. The research will examine the political and practical claims for upgrade as they intersect with the activities of the engineering workforce. A central question is likely to be: how is the valorisation of private corporate and consumer interests in the upgrade reconfiguring perceptions of telecommunications as a public good?
The research will also, necessarily, track urban change in London. It will trace the material complexities of "rewiring" - how do the skills and knowledge of workers interact with the likely resistant materials, as legacy technologies are combined with new ones? It will also look at the socio-economic contours of the upgrade.
In showing how the labour of the infrastructure is embedded in the fabric of an urban context being reshaped by capitalist logics, the research will draw on the interdisciplinary approach of urban studies which looks at how the "social lives" of both people, materials and infrastructures (e.g. buildings, transport systems, mobile phones) interact. But it will mainly be framed by a variety of anthropological approaches to infrastructure, work and technology.
As part of the research I plan an oral history project on working lives and trade unions in telecommunications, looking back at the privatisation of the industry. . Workshops will be held to discuss policy development with union informants and others. I will present findings at relevant conferences and draft two articles for publication.