BT set to re-enter US market with $1bn purchase
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BT Group is poised for a surprise return to the US market with a planned $1bn acquisition of Infonet Services, a California-based telecoms service provider.
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(InfoWorld) - More than 100 consumers in the U.K. village of Wick are among the first customers to be connected to BT Group's next-generation telecommunications network, which went live Tuesday. The BT 21st Century Network, dubbed 21CN, is one of the most ambitious network overhauls of its kind in the world. Instead of using traditional circuit-switched systems to transport phone calls, the U.K. operator is switching its entire networking infrastructure to IP (Internet Protocol) technology. The move to an all-IP network will allow BT to offer consumers and businesses "triple-play" voice, data and video services over a single ADSL2+ (Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line) broadband connection, at speeds up to 24Mbps. Among the new services supported by the network are VOIP (voice over IP) and IPTV. At the same time, the move will allow the operator to lower operating costs. It expects to save around Â£1 billion ($1.9 billion) per year as a result of the network overhaul. Total cost of the overhaul is estimated at Â£10 billion. By mid-2007, BT plans to have switched more than 350,000 lines to its next-generation network, according BT spokeswoman Anna Easton. "We aim to use the first phase as a learning period," she said. The operator aims to have "the bulk" of the country's 30 million lines converted to IP by the end the decade, Easton said. As part of its carrier wholesale operations, BT will resell capacity over its new network to around 400 telecommunications service providers in the country. 21CN is an advanced IP broadband network system based on intelligent systems, such as SIP (Session Initiation Protocol), which allows the service provider to control the communications activity to meet a customer's requirements, and MPLS (Multi-Protocol Label Switching), which enables the efficient designation and routing of IP traffic flows. BT launched its 21CN project around three years ago, according to Easton.
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London-based BT Group PLC said Monday it will strengthen its presence in North America and Asia by buying Infonet Services Corp., an international managed voice and data network services provider, for $965 million.
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LONDON (CP) - BT Group PLC has awarded a contract worth $5 million US to Nortel Networks for voice-over-Internet technology designed to link almost 10,000 agents into a so-called virtual contact centre.
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BT grows global presence but shares fall as investors doubt former monopoly can play in US market. LONDON  - BT Group PLC will buy Infonet Services Corp.
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British Telecom is hoping to see annual revenues of $250m from its operations in China over the next three years.
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(InfoWorld) - Even if an 11-year-old school girl from the tiny village of Wick in South Wales was the first person to place a call over BT Group'sÂ new next-generation network, U.K. businesses will be among the big benefactors of the all-IP (Internet Protocol) network. "We're moving toward giving far more empowerment to our corporate customers," said Neil Rogers, managing director of BT's 21st Century Network (21CN) project. "We want to give them more visibility and control of what's happening on the network." The 21CN project is one of the most ambitious network overhauls of its kind in the world. BT is replacing its 16 legacy voice and data networks with a new network built entirely on IP technology. On Tuesday, Laura Wess became the first 21CN user when she made a call from her school, which BT selected as the launching pad for its new network. The move to an all-IP network will allow BT to offer consumers and small businesses "triple-play" voice, data and video services over a single ADSL2+ (Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line) broadband connection, at speeds up to 24Mbps. Among the new services supported by the network are VOIP (voice over IP) and IPTV. The next-generation network will also allow BT to offer a far more flexible service to enterprise customers. "Today, the managed service contracts we offer are very manually intensive at the front end," Rogers said. "Even though we try to integrate our operating systems with the front-end premises systems of our customers, we still find the process to be very labor-intensive. Our all-IP approach gives us much more flexibility." Resilience -- the ability to recover from network hiccups -- and security are two additional features of 21CN that should interest corporate customers, according to Rogers. Because BT has chosen to build a completely new IP network from scratch instead of adding an IP overlay over its legacy systems, the operator has been able to design resilience and security into the network from the very beginning. Although Rogers sees little room for BT to lower prices as a result of the network overhaul, he expects the new network to give the operator greater flexibility in how it charges customers. "More attractive pricing is quite difficult in the U.K., where prices are already very aggressive," Rogers said. "But we plan to be more flexible in our pricing, for instance by charging for services as opposed to physical capacity or even allowing customers to pay on-demand for some services." Testing has proved among the biggest challenges of the next-generation rollout, according to Rogers. "It's been a huge effort to test network interoperability and customer premises equipment," he said. "It's an ongoing challenge." Although some experts have questioned whether BT's choice of ADSL2+ technology to link homes and small businesses could someday become a bottleneck for services requiring speeds higher than 24Mbps, Rogers said the technology offers sufficient bandwidth for the operator's planned high-speed services for the next four to five years. "At some point, we'll look at local fiber deployment," Rogers said. "At the moment, however, there's no business case for fiber in the U.K."
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In a move to strengthen its position as a global provider of IT and networking services, BT Group PLC has agreed to buy U.S.-based Infonet Services Corp., the companies announced Monday.
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BAE Systems, the UK&#39;s largest defence contractor, has expanded further in the United States with the $600m (Â£489m) acquisition of DigitalNet Holdings, a leading IT supplier to the Pentagon.
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Advertising giant WPP is to buy US firm Grey Global, in a deal which could be worth as much as Â£750m ($1.3bn). The UK-based group won the auction for Grey Global, the seventh-largest advertiser in the US, against
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UK telecom giant BT announced its best-ever quarter in terms of wholesale broadband connections. In the three months to Sept. 30, the carrier had more than 600,000 new connections.
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LONDON BT Group said Monday that it was buying Infonet Services, a US-based company that provides global data-communications services, for $965 million to gain more clients in North America and Asia.
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Mobile phone giant Vodafone Group   VOD.L confirmed on Monday its plan to enter Britain's   cut-throat fixed-line broadband Internet market via a deal with   the wholesale arm of telecoms firm BT Group BT.L.
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Mobile phone operator Vodafone Group Plc  confirmed on Monday its plan to enter the cut-throat fixed-line  broadband Internet market via a deal with the wholesale arm of  telecoms firm BT Group Plc.
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British Telecom is buying U.S.-based Infonet Services in a deal that values the company at almost $1 Billion.
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BT Group Plc will buy Infonet Services  Corp. for $965 million in cash, giving the UK's top fixed-line  telecoms company 1,800 multinational corporate clients and an  expanded presence in the United States and Asia.
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BT Group is poised for a surprise return to the US market with a planned US$1 billion acquisition of Infonet Services, a California-based telecom service provider.