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BT Selects Suppliers for 21st Century Network Effort

April 28, 2005

Today a stream of announcements came out from the various preferred suppliers chosen for BT's 21st Century Network program, crowned by this summary from BT itself:

BT Announces Preferred Suppliers for 21st Century Network Program

BT describes 21st Century Network as "the world's most radical next generation network transformation program." BT expects to spend as much as 10 billion pounds sterling on the program to build out its new communications infrastructure in the UK.

The following roster of preferred suppliers not only identifies the players in the upcoming buildout but also the nature and scale of the 21st Century Network effort as BT sees it:

1. Fujitsu and Huawei have been chosen in the access domain which will
link BT's existing access network with the new 21CN.

2. Alcatel, Cisco and Siemens have been selected as preferred suppliers
for metro nodes which provide routing and signalling for 21CN's
voice, data and video services.

3. Cisco and Lucent will be 21CN's preferred suppliers for core nodes
providing high capacity and cost efficient connections between metro
nodes.

4. Ericsson has been selected in the i-node domain -- in essence the
intelligence that controls the services.

5. Ciena and Huawei have been chosen in the transmission domain to
supply the optical electronics that will convert the signals carried
at high capacity over the cables connecting the metro and core nodes.

In today's news release, Matt Bross, BT Group's chief technology officer, comments on the importance of this program: "The capability that BT is putting in place through this investment in 21CN is unequalled anywhere in the world. It will enable us to introduce new services at a speed that is simply impossible today."

BT said that it spent two years in discussions with over 300 potential suppliers before settling on this short list. It describes this competitive process as "one of the largest single procurement programs ever undertaken in the communications industry."

AB -- 4/28/05




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