BT Plans Welsh Migration

LONDON -- BT today announced details of the first steps it will take to transition customers in the UK to its 21st century network (21CN). This is a new secure and intelligent communications infrastructure that will deliver existing and future services designed to make people’s lives more productive and businesses more efficient. BT believes 21CN will have as significant an impact on the way people communicate as the arrival of motorways had on road travel in the late 20th century, and will make communications easier, faster and better for voice, data or video services.

Starting in late November this year, BT, working closely with other communications providers, will begin the planned upgrade of customers and their voice and broadband services, in Cardiff and the surrounding area.

Customers will not have to do anything for their lines to be upgraded. Telephone numbers will not change and, as all work will be carried out in BT’s telephone exchanges, no roads will have to be dug up to deliver the upgrade.

The first stage of the new network will be delivered in three phases, increasing in scale with each phase. Phase one, to run from November this year until March 2007, will see the upgrade of voice services to some 10 percent of customer lines in Cardiff and the surrounding area. Phase two, from April to mid May 2007, will deliver a further 10 percent of upgraded lines.

By the end of Phase 3 in the summer of 2007, BT will have upgraded all 350,000 customer lines. 90,000 of these lines also support broadband and ISDN2 and ISDN30 services. Private circuit-based services, which typically support business-critical corporate applications, will not be migrated on to the new network until much later in the programme.

“Years of planning, testing and development will culminate in South Wales in three months when we start the exciting process of bringing the world’s most advanced national communications infrastructure to everyone the UK.

“This is a world leading programme that will provide customers with a radically improved experience and new products and services faster.” said Paul Reynolds, chief executive of BT Wholesale and BT Board sponsor for the 21CN programme. “21st Century Network is an unprecedented programme of cooperation right across the communications industry and a world’s first for the UK.”

BT Group plc (NYSE: BT; London: BTA)