21st Century Network

Sonea Fifer

Sonea Fifer

Sonea Fifer

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Hi there

Was wondering if any of the people posting here have heard of BT's 21st Centuary Network (21CN)?

They're claiming its largest overhaul of BT's core network to date - instead of using traditional PSTN (pubic switched telephone network) lines to shunt traffic across the network, it's switching to a single, all-IP (internet protocol) network - my local exchange is due to be completed round about 2009.

So would I be right in saying this is basically ADSL4+ giving a potential 100Mb? :eek:

Yes I know to take all the figure's with a pinch of salt, including BT's alleged £10bn installation costs - am just wondering if anyone else here knows any of the facts and figures on this given they've already started rolling it out in the Cardiff area?
 
We're currently working quite closely with BT on their 21CN proposals.

Quite a lot of equipment that people take for granted won't work on 21CN because the manufacturers ignored BT's engineering guidleines. One area of major concern is intruder alarm systems; certain models can't get a dial tone on 21CN networks and because of issues like this I believe BT will slow down the rollout a little.

Someone inside BT told me that if they don't get 21CN off the ground in the next 5 years, the existing network will virtually meltdown.

Whether it leads to any new products is anyone's guess at this stage. My take on this is that BT are really just changing the core switching technologies at the exchange and this will have little immediate impact on the types of broadband product delivered. We really need more fibre in the streets around our homes and businesses before we will get truly amazing services.
 
I thought that the 21CN network (talking to a BT change engineer, and project planner) was the upgrade of the network to fibre up to the 'street boxes' and changing the current PSTN to a Ip based network.

Stelly
 
Also what is going to be interesting is that...

BT announced that Entanet would be one of the first to trial this new service... thank god I'm on adsl24 :)

Stelly
 
Stelly said:
I thought that the 21CN network (talking to a BT change engineer, and project planner) was the upgrade of the network to fibre up to the 'street boxes' and changing the current PSTN to a Ip based network.

Stelly
Click to expand...

Its deffo an IP based network but im not sure about the fibre up to the DP's in the street.
 
Fibre-to-the-Cabinet as its called has been trialled here in Northern Ireland in areas that are too far from the exchange to get any ADSL.

As far as I know its been successful from a technical standpoint but is expensive.

Its not a part of 21CN but in fact a seperate project running in parallel - whether it ever sees the light of day as a full blown product is anyone's guess.
 
Yep all these next gen comms networks are doing is improving the back end or haulage part. You will still be having copper into your house, and seriously how much bandwidth do you NEED into your home.
 
mdjmcnally said:
Yep all these next gen comms networks are doing is improving the back end or haulage part. You will still be having copper into your house, and seriously how much bandwidth do you NEED into your home.
Click to expand...

Depends what you want to do, streaming HDTV over IP will require a lot more bandwidth than you can get right now for instance. The way the internet works is changing, the ASP model is here to stay. In 5 years in theory you're more likely to use the google word processor and spreadsheet than office, and those apps will have evolved and want more bandwidth.

It's the strange way the industry is repeating itself, in the beginning processing power was centralised and users had dumb terminals, then as desktops got affordable it changed, now that connectivity has improved its moving back towards centralisation.

As said though, 21CN does precious little for home users, it affects the backbone only for the most part. Though the mass availability of IP transit in the backbone *should* make broadband even cheaper and bring down the price of business services too.
 
France Telecom - hardly considered a forward-thinking company by anyone who has had the misfortune to deal with them - has been trialling FTTH for almost 2 years now, and on a fairly large scale too.

I've not heard what BT are doing with regards this... if anything yet :(
 
Like this, and this one from 2005. The biggest problem is Ofcom.

FT were pushed into it by competition - France is some way further down the LLU/FTTx line than we are, so the incumbent has to do something. I don't see anyone else rushing to build an FTTH network in the UK though...
 
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