BT Bids Switched Telephones Good-Bye

[Toby Fisher]

On Fri, 11 Jun 2004, Janina Sajka wrote:

> >From NewsScan Daily
> 11 June 2004
> 
> 
> BT TO SHUT DOWN 'CIRCUIT-SWITCHED' NETWORK IN FAVOR OF VOIP
>      U.K. giant British Telecom will gradually shut down its traditional 
> circuit-switched network and migrate over to technologies that route phone 
> calls over the Internet. The change "will deliver our vision of a 
> converged, multimedia world where our customers can access any 
> communications service from any device, anywhere -- at broadband speed," 
> says BT Wholesale CEO Paul Reynolds. The new system will enable each 
> subscriber to have a single phone number for both mobile and fixed-line 
> services, and will make possible such add-on features as family conference 
> calls, video streaming and voice-activated phones. BT estimates that by the 
> 2008-09 fiscal year, the new network could save it about £1 billion 
> annually. (AP 10 June 2004)

That's interesting.

During the mid-90s, one of our lecturers said (and remember this was 
before broadband), rthat BT could save themselves a huge amount of money 
by scrapping the pstn (analog phone network) and give, yes give, 
*everybody* an isdn line.  This is due to the high cost of pstn 
maintenance, fraying and aged cabling etc etc.

Cheers.

-- 
Toby Fisher	Email: toby at tjfisher.co.uk
Tel.: +44(0)1480 417272	Mobile: +44(0)7974 363239
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