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BT completes 21CN trial in South Wales

Following successful completion, BT is to close it’s voice trial network and continue migrating customers to the live 21CN (21st Century) network.

The trial first started in 2005 and tested the ability of the network to carry voice calls over a pure IP (Internet Protocol) network and not use the traditional PSTN network.  It handled around 500,000 calls per day and provided a quality of service equal to, or often better than traditional PSTN voice calls.

The first wave of live customers in the village of Wick were already migrated in November 2006 and BT is now preparing to migrate around 350,000 customers in and around the Cardiff area to the network.

When completed, 21CN will also deliver the first nationwide wholesale broadband service offering planned speeds of up to 24 Mbps using ADSL2 technology.

Matt Beal, CTO of BT Wholesale commented, “This trial has been hugely significant in informing our plans for the nationwide deployment of 21CN. Its completion demonstrates the tremendous strides that we’ve made together with our strategic vendors and communications provider customers in bringing 21CN from concept to reality for end-customers.

“From making the world’s first end to end IP test calls using the trial network back in January 2005, we’re now successfully moving the first customers across to 21CN with the network fully live in parts of South Wales. By the end of this year, we will have upgraded 350,000 lines. And in other parts of the country, we’re busy preparing exchanges and upgrading infrastructure to enable national migration from early 2008, starting with broadband.”