BT Plans Move To IP Telephony, Starting Next Year 228
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."
PSTN? (Score:4, Informative)
Public Switched Telephone Network btw.
Cheap broadband products (Score:3, Informative)
BT don't do any cheap broadband products, only expensive overpriced ones
Re:So what numbers will we use (Score:4, Informative)
Basically, they're turning the voice data into packets and then sending the packets across their network, improving the effeciency of their lines. There's been a lot of discussion about this lately actually. Either way, I wish the american phone companies would get on the ball...
Re:bandwidth capacity? (Score:3, Informative)
It will certainly not be as bad, load-wise, as installing high-speed Internet access.
Re:Yea... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Yea... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:rims? (Score:3, Informative)
Yes, they use it a lot here, but I dont think its an exchange limitation (generally anyway) - it seems to be more of a local box/cabling thing.. when we had an extra 3 lines put in the engineer said if we got 1 more, BT would have to upgrade the cable from the exchange to the subbox, then to our house! He also mumbled something about that probably helping them justify updating the exchange to DSL as well, but being students at the time, we couldnt afford the "chance" of DSL for the cost of another line
Those dates won't be in base 10 (Score:1, Informative)
Those without any experience of BT, especially as business customers should know that 2026 will be the more likely date. It is still a glacially slow behemoth that acts with sniffy surprise when expected permit competition in the marketplace.
background info (Score:3, Informative)
The public switched telephone network (PSTN) is the concatenation of the world's public circuit-switched [fact-index.com] telephone [fact-index.com] networks, in much the same way that the Internet [fact-index.com] is the concatenation of the world's public IP [fact-index.com]-based packet-switched [fact-index.com] networks. Originally a network of fixed-line analog telephone systems, the PSTN is now almost entirely digital, and now includes mobile [fact-index.com] as well as fixed telephones.
Re:Who the f*ck is BT? ;-) (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Who the f*ck is BT? ;-) (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Powersource? (Score:3, Informative)
Since a lot of COs and switching centers already have this massive infrastructure for supplying DC power most (if not all) internetworking equipment can be obtained in DC power supply versions.
So yes, the equipment at the CO will stay up through a power outage because it'll still be powered by those 48V batteries, equipment at the customer end is a completely different thing... but unless it's a full FTTH solution there are options for getting power to the CPE, like power over ethernet (if they use an ethernet last mile), and iirc there are power distribution solutions for coax if they decide to go that route.
Re:So... (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.
Re:PSTN? (Score:5, Informative)
"Public Switching"... Heh!
Actually... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Yea... (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:PSTN? (Score:5, Informative)
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).
Re:PSTN? (Score:4, Informative)
"packet switched telephone network" gives 61 results on Google (all from idiots).
"Public switched telephone network" gives around 119000 results.
I rest my case.
BT coward.... (Score:2, Informative)
1000 people will have it tested in the south of England in 2005 I belive
Now they just have to start offering good internet and phone products to win customers back
Fears people have. (Score:2, Informative)
Official name is simply 'BT', not British Telecom (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Yea... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:rims? (Score:1, Informative)
Remember at all times that the person you are talking to is a thick bastard who couldnt get a real job and hates his/her life..
If you mean telesales, yeah you're probably right. Bunch of script monkeys who used to sell the entire range of digital services to little old ladies who didn't want them. If you mean 150 then fuck you, I used to do that job and the vast majority of the people there knew their stuff.
You got that bit right though.
Re:Actually... (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Who the f*ck is BT? ;-) (Score:3, Informative)
Re:rims? (Score:3, Informative)
Being on either device basically guarentees that you will be unable to get ADSL, although Telstra the company that owns the phone lines will now attempt to transpose over to plain copper if they are cajoled enough.
For more information on the Australian broadband experience have a look at whirlpool. [whirlpool.net.au]
Utter rubbish... (Score:3, Informative)
The reason why people would give out the name of the area that they lived in is that, back in the days when the system was set up when overlaying the alphabet onto the digits 0-9 had more significance in the UK, part of the name would correspond to the area code. In fact, the area codes themselves derived from the place names.
This area coding was taken so seriously that in some instances people wrote to the Post Office (because that's who ran the telephone system back then) to demand that their area codes were changed so that the numbers corresponded to more affluent places. For example, people living in the suburb of Anytown would rather have an area code refering to the posher neighbouring suburb of Sometown, so they'd petition for that area code to apply to them too. In many instances, because people in Anytown were reluctant to have a phone installed and answer the phone "Anytown 1212" (or whatever their number was) this held up uptake of telephony services to the point where the Post Office acquiesced and gave people the Sometown area code (or a derivation of it) that they wanted.
I learnt all this almost 15 years ago from a BT engineer of 20 years experience. Ask any older BT engineer and they'll confirm this for you.
Check out your connection... (Score:2, Informative)
You can simulate a VoIP call and get the MOS voice quality score. So if you want to see how your Wireless setup fares, visit testyourvoip.com [testyourvoip.com].
Even if you don't care about VoIP, it is a useful test of the latency and bandwidth of your connection. VoIP is pretty sensitive to late packets so this tool highlights connectivity problems.
-ben
Re:Wow - That's unexpected (Score:3, Informative)
Here the urban (unbundled) rate is 29.90€ for 5M/384k (TV-DSL and VoIP off) or 2M/384k (TV-DSL and VoIP on), and you can find providers starting at 12.99€/month for 512/128.
Outside of cities (non-unbundled rate), of course, the standard France Telecom gouging comes back, and prices are between 29.90€ for 1024/128 and 35€ for 512/128 (depending on the ISP, the base carrier being always FT).
Re:PSTN? (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, there's some website out there with a recording of the demo of 2VF signalling. It is _so_ quintessentially British. You can probably find it by Googling.
Actually, that's a neat trick. If you call someone and are having an argument, and they hang up on you, don't put the phone down. If they pick it up again (probably to call and whine at one of their girl friends about what a nasty man you are) you'll still be there
Not as good as it seems... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Yea... (Score:2, Informative)
BT still use System X, System Y and UXD5B exchanges.
System X (digital) is the newest, has most available select services - call barring, divert and so on - supports ADSL
System Y (digital) is the second newest, has a lot of available select services - call barring, divert and so on but certain select services have different configuration options - supports ADSL
UXD5B (analogue) is the oldest still in use on the Public BT Network, customers cannot get diverts put on when their line is broken with this kind of exchange, a lot of select services arent available. - does not support ADSL
Its 4.15pm and i am off to work, call 151 and maybe ill chat to you - 151 BT faults
Italy already carries 80% of phone calls as data (Score:4, Informative)
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!