| Posted: Monday 6th March 2006 by
Sam |
BT have today announced that they have signed the remaining four contracts for suppliers for the 21st Century Network rollout. Rather unsurprisingly, Alcatel, Cisco, Ericsson and Fujitsu are the four additional prefered suppliers that now join the existing list of Ciena, Huawei, Lucent and Siemens.
BT's 21CN plans involve moving the entire telecommunications network to an IP-based system, that will help them save £1 billion by 2007/2008. The broadband dialtone being introduced as a part of 21CN should allow end-users to sign-up and switch broadband suppliers with far greater ease and speed than is available at present.
According to the press releases, migration is expected to start in Cardiff in the second half of this year, with "the first customers in the UK [...] enjoying services over 21CN within 12 months.".
Full press releases are available from BT, Cisco and Alcatel. For those interested in the technology behind 21CN, these press releases contain some interesting details of the hardware used. |