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British Telecom Plans to Ditch POTS Network

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the one-world-one-net dept.

Samurai Cat! writes "Yahoo news has a story up regarding British Telecom's plans to scrap their traditional circuit-switched telecom network in favor of an IP-based system." Their press release has more information.

8 of 138 comments (clear)

  1. IPv6 I hope... by Supp0rtLinux · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Considering the "impending doom" we keep hearing about of the lack of available IPv4 numbers... one can only hope they intend to roll out their new network with IPv6. Heck, even a few class A's and NAT'ing each one to 254 usable addresses wouldn't help them...

    1. Re:IPv6 I hope... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      I'm sure they'll still be using their own internal network for phone calls, routing over the public internet would throw reliability and quality-of-service out the door. In fact, switching to IP may do that anyhow if they aren't careful, as internet routing systems, capacity control, hardware, redundancy etc. are far less reliable than the systems used on telephone networks.

      Running out of addresses is not one of the things that is going to be a problem. The addresses used by circuit-switched digital telephone systems are much smaller than IPv4 addresses.

  2. Ignoring the fact that this is a dupe... by James+A.+S.+Joyce · · Score: 2, Interesting

    ...I have only two questions.

    1. What are the odds of this actually being pulled off?
    2. How much will this effect me, a regular dialup and telephone user of British Telecom?

    1. Re:Ignoring the fact that this is a dupe... by Feyr · · Score: 3, Interesting

      it won't. BT is actually late at that game, i seem to recall AT&T Canada switching their whole network to IP based last year

    2. Re:Ignoring the fact that this is a dupe... by Knackered · · Score: 3, Interesting
      ...they may decide this is a good time to force customers into broadband.


      "Force" users onto broadband? Ha! I have a few relatives in the UK who would love to get broadband, and who would pay for it if it could be got for any reasonable price, but BT has dragged their heels and imposed ridiculous trigger levels for exchanges (sometimes requiring almost as many signatures as there are households). Their recent announcement that all exchanges will be converted to support DSL is way over-due; they have dragged their feet on this issue for ages (just read the Register's on-going coverage hinting that OfCom were getting more and more pissed-off with BT). This should have been a matter of policy.

      Even now, after the announcement, the more remote relatives will have to wait more than a year to have their exchanges upgraded. The only other options are prohibitively expensive (satellite uplink, there is no cable service in most of the Scottish Highlands).
      --
      a.
  3. Re:Hope they're using QoS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    One thing that kills is people idiotically spawning several point-to-point tools for conferences - get native multicast working, and use multicast-enabled tools.

  4. Break-up of ATT by dlmarti · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Ever since the original break-up of ATT inovation in
    our Telco industry has ground to a halt.

    I'm glad at least some country is reaping the benefits of technology.

  5. modem speeds by adolf · · Score: 3, Interesting

    For a company the size of BT, I see the following scenario as being faily likely:

    BT switch detects modem/fax carrier.

    BT switch toggles from rather-compressed g.723 to uncompressed 64kbps g.711 . g.711 is is either aLaw or uLaw, depending on pond-sidedness, just like ISDN, and also just like things are switched "normally" today.

    Modem communication happens normally; BT writes off increased bandwidth (vs. g.723 voice) by saying to themselves "Well, at least that one g.711 modem call didn't cost us any more line capacity than it did before, and we got to packet-switch it instead of channelize it. Cool."

    Everyone's happy. And your modem doesn't even know the difference.

    --
    Kid-proof tablet..