Not long ago a simple telephone call was enough – but with technology constantly changing and shaping our expectations of telecommunications, UK businesses have become more demanding and their needs more complex.
The shift in expectation has been so dramatic that a straightforward phone call from a fixed line is fast gaining retro appeal.
Video on-demand, interactive real-time services and enhanced music and speech quality are just some of the applications driving the need for more bandwidth, higher speeds – and more complex telephony provision.
A helping hand was promised in June 2004, when BT announced plans for its 21st Century Network (21CN) project.
The first stage of this £10bn network infrastructure overhaul is the ADSL Max system, which will upgrade more than 5,300 exchanges across the UK, covering 99.6 per cent of homes and businesses, providing 8Mbit/s broadband speed.
System development and rollout is being supported by Indian IT services company Infosys.
BT programme director Alan Bateman says the improvements are a necessary step towards offering service providers the infrastructure they need to develop increasingly sophisticated applications for businesses.
He says the main objective was to offer service providers a more intelligent and flexible network platform.
‘Until now, communications services provided by whichever wholesaler you choose have been “dumb” services,’ he says. ‘You get a pair of wires, a fixed bandwidth and basic connectivity from one location to another.’
21CN will offer users service flexibility, with a choice of different bandwidths, levels of service and cost points.
Service providers can also buy guaranteed quality of service at certain times of the day, specified by the client.
‘Gaming is a classic example: a basic connection is fine for low-cost gaming, but high-end gaming with voice and video requires a guaranteed amount of bandwidth and quality,’ says Bateman.
‘The new service will be able to tailor specifications to each customer’s requirements.’
Bateman identifies a three-pronged approach to improving the communications network: reusing as much of its existing investment as is feasible; pushing technology to get the best performance; and making sure the IT department keeps operational costs low.
The scale of 21CN was the biggest challenge Bateman faced. BT’s previous broadband network was very mechanical and operated on a fixed rate, offering a fixed performance level.
The company’s ADSL Max uses integrated intelligence; the network self-monitors and constantly fine-tunes, identifying faults before they happen.
‘Most faults don’t appear suddenly,’ says Bateman. ‘They are a long time coming, when interferences are introduced into the home or by bad weather.
‘By watching the network, we can see changes as they happen and act to prevent problems.
‘On a small scale it is simple to deal with, but implementing this huge intelligent layer for monitoring was quite challenging to do nationally.’
The other significant challenge was reliability versus cost.
The aim was to build a network that offered much higher speeds at reduced fault rates when compared with those suffered by previous systems.
Traditionally, the higher the speed, the higher the fault rate. Bateman says he would have been happy to maintain current fault rates at higher speeds, as this would already represent a cost saving.
Bateman and his team achieved a reduced fault rate at 8Mbit/s speeds against the 2Mbit/s product. And he predicts that the self-learning nature of the system can improve on the current fault rate.
Smartbroadband, the intelligent component of the new network, has the potential to drive down costs even further by improving fault rates continuously.
‘Over the coming years the product will learn to recognise early indications of common interference problems, such as noisy fridges, street lights and Christmas tree lights – the worst offenders,’ says Bateman.
BT Retail is planning to launch a number of applications to run on the new network.
While the network offers a highest speed of 8Mbit/s, BT is also testing 16Mbit/s and 24Mbit/s. Bateman believes that it is important to launch the different speed networks at the right time.
‘Giving bandwidth to people who don’t need it is costly to do,’ he says. ‘We will launch it when the demand is right.’
Quick out of the blocks
What was most remarkable about the 21st Century Network project was the time it took to bring the system to market.
Building a new infrastructure would traditionally have taken at least 18 months.
But BT programme director Alan Bateman and his team built a marketing prototype in 90 days, releasing it first to a sample of service providers to test. The final launch product was built in another 90 days.
ADSL Max is the first release under BT’s new philosophy of launching a product with minimum requirements and fine-tuning it after it has gone to market.
‘We have a second version of ADSL Max in development right now,’ says Bateman.
‘In the past we would have perfected every last feature before we released a product. But we listened to the service providers, who want the product launched first and refined later.
‘We now know that the optimum development time for cost efficiency is 90 days. For me, the biggest achievement is how quickly we have launched this product
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