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BT Plans Move To IP Telephony, Starting Next Year

Posted by timothy on from the kin-y'-hyeah-me-now dept.

pure_equanimity writes "The BBC have published an article saying that BT are planning to migrate from a PSTN to an IP network, a move to cost 3bn. They say that broadband will become ubiquitous, with customers having the ability to plug any device in to get access. They also say that current cheap broadband products will more than likely not be viable in five years time. They plan to start rolling out in 2006, and cover the vast majority of customers by 2009."

7 of 228 comments (clear)

  1. PSTN? by OverlordQ · · Score: 4, Informative

    I'll admit I had to look this one up, if ya woulda said POTS, I would of known right off the bat.

    Public Switched Telephone Network btw.

    --
    Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
    1. Re:PSTN? by stoborrobots · · Score: 4, Informative

      It's a Switched Telephone Network for Public use... as opposed to Private Automatic Branch eXchange...

      "Public Switching"... Heh!

      --
      "Go to CNN [for a] spell-checked, fact-checked summary" -- CmdrTaco
    2. Re:PSTN? by Alioth · · Score: 5, Informative

      Actually, PSTN does stand for Public Switched Telephone Network - the public bit meaning not private (as in PABX - Private Automatic Branch eXchange).

      Packet switching on telephone networks is a relatively new thing (compared to the history of automatic telephone switching). Until 20 years ago, most telephone switching was still done by electromechanical machines (google for Strowger Telephone Exchange) - huge rooms full of physical switches (uniselectors, bidirectional selectors) and relays which moved and clattered as subscribers dialed telephone numbers; the tones (such as ringing, number unobtainable, engaged etc) generated by a motor-driven machine. If you go to the London Science Museum, they have part of one of these exchanges you can play with.
      Trunk calls were routed using analogue frequency division multiplexing rather than packet switching. Signalling between mechanical telephone exchanges was done at voice frequencies (for example, the famous 2600Hz tone - in Britain, the frequency was different and it was known as 2VF - if you listen to some Radio 4 radio plays you'll find the sound engineers still like inserting the 'pip' sound when someone answers a call which you heard when the 2VF signalling wasn't quite fully supressed from reaching the subscriber's phone. These 'pip' sounds probably disappeared from the public network 20 years ago but the sound engys at the BBC seem to like them).

      --
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  2. Re:Yea... by Zog+The+Undeniable · · Score: 4, Informative

    All BT's exchanges have been System X (digital) for a few years now, but pulse-dialling still works in software, should you want it. The main reason some people still have dial phones is that they were hardwired to the wall, and it's an offence to get anyone but BT to install a modern plug-in wall box. At a cost.

    --
    When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
  3. Re:So... by Tooky · · Score: 4, Informative

    So they are gonna hook customers up right before the prices go up? I thought prices would go down as time marches on? What about all that "dark fiber"?

    Reading the article I took it to mean that cheap broadband IP telephony products would be unviable in 5 years time, not broadband internet per se.

  4. Re:Yea... by curator_thew · · Score: 4, Informative

    "They're not going to get some old lady to change her pots phone for some fancy IP phone"

    Did you comprehend the article? This is more about their internal network, rather than the customer equipment.

    They will convert their entire internal network into VOIP, so even if you have an old analog POTS line, your calls will be VOIP'd between exchanges.

    Naturally, once they have a native internal VOIP network, then they're in a better position to offer interesting VOIP services directly to the customer. But a vast majority of customers will still be using analog POTS.

    It's hardly surprising: if they don't do this then they will fall behind in offering the kinds of innovative services that upstart VOIP vendors can offer. It also makes for better service integration and interoperation with future 4G technologies, etc.

  5. Italy already carries 80% of phone calls as data by optical-damage · · Score: 4, Informative

    Telecom Italia already carries 80% of its national backbone telephone calls on an IP based network infrastructure, and something like 40% of their international calls.

    This is the back-end of the service, multiplexing together thousands of calls over high speed (2.5 and 10Gb/second) network links. The network also uses class of service and many other configuration setups to ensure a consistent quality of service for the traffic flow. You can be sure everything will be massively resilient. In addition this traffic won't traverse the public Internet at all, but will be on a private network (though gatewayed to the Internet for connectivity to other services). This will allow BT to guarantee they wont be hit by Internet related issues like congestion, black-hole routing and so on. Dont compare this service to public Internet VoIP, its NOTHING like it.

    Personally I think this is a fantastic move, and will really help the UK take advantage of up and coming technologies over the next decade.

    PS there is already an Internet standard to map IP addresses to public phone numbers, and there is also work on integrating VoIP into the DNS infrastructure!