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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."

18 of 228 comments (clear)

  1. Wow - That's unexpected by Nurgled · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This was the last thing I expected from BT after their faffing about with getting DSL sorted out a few years back. This should be interesting...

    Too bad I'm not a BT customer. I wonder what will become of all of the mini-telcos which currently hang off BT's network.

  2. So... by macshune · · Score: 4, Interesting

    "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."

    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"?

    1. 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.

    2. Re:So... by AllUsernamesAreGone · · Score: 4, Funny

      This is BT. Control and Overcharge are their middle names. Actually their full name is Bastard Control Crumbling Infrastructure Bad Support Incompetent Overcharge Telecom. They shorten it to BT so they can fit it on the trucks and use the cover name "British Telecom".

      They'd have no problems at all in controlling or overcharging for IPT, especially with the Toothless Wonder regulator (whose best threats seem to be things like "Oh, go on, please drop your prices, pretty please with a picture of Tony on the top"... although anything with a picture of President Blair on it is probably a serious threat now I think about it..)

  3. 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).

      --
      Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
  4. Yea... by Deltan · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Good Luck with that BT. There are tons of people out there with old rotary phones still, utilizing pulse dialing. They're not going to get some old lady to change her pots phone for some fancy IP phone.

    1. 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.
    2. 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. Re:So what numbers will we use by ZombieEngineer · · Score: 5, Funny
    When you go to IPv6, it makes it nigh impossible for sales people to cold call your unlisted IP address.

    ZombieEngineer

  6. UK is temporatily unavailable. by Big+Nothing · · Score: 4, Funny

    Phone service to the UK is temporatily unavailable due to the Sasser.Q virus. Please try again later.

    --
    SIG: TAKE OFF EVERY 'CAPTAIN'!!
  7. Not going to happen... by MancDiceman · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This is a fairy tale dreamt up for investors, and you can expect within 2 years an announcement that it's all much harder than expected.

    The UK phone network is not a simple beast, and not like any other phone network in the world. I suspect they're putting down the plan and hoping that they can start angling for some government "investment" to replace the absolute crud we have in place at the moment.

    I would advise caution however, when BT announce anything at all. Remember this is the company who announced "universal" broadband 15 years ago and sat on the technology when it became available until they were effectively bullied into it.

  8. Re:As usual... by Xrikcus · · Score: 5, Insightful

    But it's a very different thing trying to use VOIP over the internet itself, general public data networks with little by way of service guarantees, and converting a managed telecom backbone network to use IP.

  9. Re:The Skype Telephone by onion2k · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Basically, they are going to spend 3 billion to put themselvs out of business. Great!

    Wrong. They've realised that things like Skype will put them out of business if they don't move on, so they're shifting away from traditional voice comms and entirely into data comms. They'll change their pricing accordingly too, probably to a charge based on the amount of data you use rather than an amount of time.

    Its the old style voice telcos that are going to be disappearing.

    --
    http://twitter.com/onion2k
  10. Will this be going to IPV6 or IPV4? by Afty0r · · Score: 4, Insightful

    One of these would be extremely good for the UK and very forward thinking, the other would be investing money in a technology already straining to bursting point...

    And on another note, how cool will it be to have links like <a href="phonecall:phone.mydomain.com">Phone Me!</a> on websites - how long until we have that I wonder?

    1. Re:Will this be going to IPV6 or IPV4? by Viol8 · · Score: 4, Funny

      "how cool will it be to have links "

      About as cool as the sun. Thats just what you'd need , loads of phone calls from people who "just want to ring for a laugh" or people who click accidentaly or people who phone up to tell you your page sucks whereas if they had to actually dial the number they might not bother. Still , it'll probably happen. Every crap idea ends up in browsers eventually.

  11. 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!