Broadband

British Telecom have today announced that they will be trialing PSTN to VoIP transformations at 18 exchanges in South East London, Kent and East Anglia. The trial is set to involve 1,000 customers and will begin in October 2004 and run through until September 2005. The ultimate goal of the trial is to pave the way for mass deployment which is set to start in 2006. BT aim to have the majority of the deployment complete by 2008. They anticipate the new network to cost them £3 billion for each year that they are deploying it, but with an eventual saving of £1 billion per annum once it is in place.

The 21st Century Network (referred to as “21CN”) signals the end of the PSTN voice communications, making room for Voice Over IP communications. Customers involved in the trial will use the fibre to make VoIP calls and also use video and data services (such as the internet).

In both press releases made by BT today, they were eager to stress the point that many of their statements are forward-looking and may therefore change at some point in the future. Basically, this is not yet a fixed roll-out plan of fibre to the premises and therefore we should not expect miracles instantly.

The original press releases from BT are available here and here. A live web-cast presentation by Paul Reynolds, CEO BT Wholesale, will be made here at 10:30am BST.

A list of the 18 exchanges to be involved in the trial is shown below:

A map showing the location of these exchanges is available here.

Tags: BT Wholesale, VOIP