21CN: building momentum

Despite the challenging economy, the new financial year will see BT's 21CN programme build on its momentum to date with a focus on expanding new business opportunities for Communications Providers.

Over the last 12 months, BT's 21CN programme has delivered a new service agnostic core network and transmission infrastructure for the UK market. It has enabled ADSL2+-based broadband services for 40% of homes and businesses and delivered Ethernet across the UK's leading footprint.

Over the last few months, BT has been reviewing its strategic priorities for the financial year ahead. "We've considered BT's next generation access plans, together with customer and vendor input and of course we've also looked at the state of the economy" says George Nazi, managing director for the 21CN programme.

"We believe our strategic priorities for 09/10 completes the transition of 21CN to be market-led. The focus for next year is also operationally simpler to deliver whilst building on our momentum and conserving costs for BT and the industry."

BT sees the future as being a fibre-led economy. Later this year, it will launch its fibre to the cabinet across the UK. "Our superfast broadband strategy has been made possible by the successful delivery of our multi-service core 21CN network" says Nazi.

BT will expand its ADSL2+ broadband footprint beyond its current 40% and Ethernet beyond its existing 600 nodes and will do this in line with market demand. "We're really looking to our CP customers to help us demonstrate real customer demand. That will dictate where and when we build out these new services" says George.

The new year will also see BT continue with Pathfinder migrations to industrial scale beyond the 75,000 customers already identified as it continues to prepare for the introduction of 21CN voice services outside South Wales.

BT also plans to introduce innovative new platforms and services to the market this year, including Software as a Service (SaaS) and Cloud Computing.

"BT is now parallel running 20CN and 21CN, a key step towards preparation for large-scale legacy platform decommissioning. At the same time, we're focused on making the next generation of communications services available to the largest market possible, allowing our CP customers to enable their customers to take full advantage of the increased speed and service functionality that 21CN delivers" says George.

GET MORE >

Find out how 21CN can help you grow your sales and revenues by watching our special ENGAGE LIVE webcasts on 30 April and 19 May. You can read more about the programmes and register here.

See what everyday life could be like for your customers in the 21^st Century Network world. We publish the first of a series of end-user portraits in this issue.

Get briefed in on the latest 21CN plan update here.

Or contact your BT Wholesale account management team.