BT 21CN stands for British Telecom 21st Century Network and describes a massive project by British Telecom, that has been running for several years, to migrate it’s ageing wired cable based telephony network, the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) to an Internet Protocol (IP) based network in order to implement techniques similar to VoIP (Voice over IP).

Migrating this network of connections requires a wholesale change in the groundwork infrastructure, and will incur a massive cost and upheaval, but the benefits of such as a change mean that BT will be in a position to utilise it’s network to provide far more services than are available on the network today. Some of these services include VoIP, video and television on demand, high definition broadcasting, streaming, gaming, and improved internet access speeds.

Impacts of the change could also lead to faster ADSL broadband network speeds to the home, to up to 20Mbit/s and beyond, through the implementation of ADSL2+, following upgrades to local Exchanges  – something that Local Loop Unbundled (LLU) partners have been providing for some time.

The current progress tells us that the 21CN UK core and transmission network is complete, the 21CN wholesale broadband network is available to exchanges serving more than 10 million UK homes, BT’s global network of virtualised data centres have been launched.

To learn more about 21CN Visit BT’s 21st Century Network website.