BT has concluded negotiations and signed contracts with the remaining four preferred suppliers for its next generation network transformation programme - the 21st Century Network (21CN).
Contracts have been signed with Alcatel, Cisco, Ericsson and Fujitsu.
BT's 21CN will provide the basis of the most powerful competitive and productive communications environment in the world and represents one of the biggest ever investments in the economic infrastructure of the UK by a private company. It will encourage innovation and provide the UK with a competitive edge. Lead times for the introduction of new products and services will reduce dramatically making it significantly quicker and cheaper for businesses to bring new and exciting services to market.
BT's preferred suppliers all have operations in the UK. Each agreement signed will support employment in the UK among the suppliers selected as well as BT itself. Alcatel and Cisco have been selected to supply metro nodes providing routing and signaling for 21CN's voice, data and video services. Cisco has also been selected to supply large scale routers providing high capacity, cost efficient connections between metro nodes. Ericsson has been selected in the i-node domain - in essence the intelligence that controls the services. Fujitsu will be providing access technology which will link BT's existing network with the new 21CN.
Paul Reynolds, BT Wholesale chief executive, said,
"These are exciting times. The UK is the first country in the world to move its core telecommunications infrastructure to a next generation all-IP network. The industry worldwide is watching what we are doing very closely. BT's customers will be the first to enjoy the next generation of converged network services that 21CN enables."
Meryl Bushell, Chief Procurement Officer for BT Group, added,
"This concludes what has been one of the largest single procurement programmes ever undertaken in the communications industry worldwide. We're confident that we now have the right commercial agreements in place which will enable us to achieve world class delivery of the programme."
21CN will completely transform BT's networks, reducing complexity and radically reducing BT's cost base with identified savings of around one billion pounds a year by 2009.
The migration of customer lines to the new infrastructure is expected to begin in Cardiff during the second half of 2006.
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