BT’s 21st Century Network
What is BT’s 21Century Network?
BT is investing billions of pounds in upgrading it’s telephone network. BT is now leading with new data products and has just launched Ethernet and BT Broadband services over the new infrastructure. The full roll-out will not be complete until 2014 and the old products will not finally be switched off until 2016.The new single IP (Internet Protocol) based network that will carry all types of traffic – voice, data, video, web surfing and TV – over the one network. It will save money for BT and the the cost benefits can be passed on to customers.
When can we have BT’s 21st Century Network?
The first 106 core nodes are operational now and by April 2009. By April 2010 this will rise to 1100 exchanges covering 98% of the UK.
How much of the UK does the BT Broadband service cover?
By April 2009, over 500 exchanges will be enabled covering 40% of the population or about 10 million households. By April 2010 this will have risen to 60% coverage, but complete UK coverage may not come until 2012.
When will the new my phone line be converted?
The first voice trials were conducted in two small exchanges near Cardiff and that experience was guiding a further larger trial of 75,000 users to be migrated to the new network. Thereafter there is a roll-out across the UK that will take up to 2014 to complete, exchange by exchange.
What will be the impact on my home phone service?
Everyone will be told what to expect by their current service provider. If for example, you are a Carphone Warehouse customer, connected to one of their unbundled exchanges, nothing will change as you are not connected to the BT 21CN network. If you are a BT customer or a customer of another service provider using the BT 21CN network, there will be a short outage of a few minutes on the night of the changeover, but that is all, as the calling features stay the same, although new features will be offered in the future.
What are the longer term benefits?
The BT 21CN is geared up to deliver whatever services can be devised and these can then be made available across the whole of the UK overnight, rather than having to wait for each local exchange to be upgraded.
What about the talk of super-fast Broadband and Ethernet?
One of the benefits of the new network is the greater bandwidth delivered to each exchange. Domestic customers will be enjoying up to 24Mbps services and business customers will be able to afford bandwidths of 100Mbps or more even to small business sites or to each branch office of a larger organisation, enabling a different approach to computing in the 21st century.
