UK: doubts casts on the progress of BT flagship 21CN

[light reading] BT Group plc says it has slowed down its £10 billion (US$14.9 billion) 21CN process and has withdrawn an initial converged service because it wasn't likely to be profitable. But the carrier denies it has abandoned its next-generation voice platform migration plans.

Suggestions that BT had put the brakes on its voice migration plans, which involve moving its voice services to an all-IP platform and retiring its TDM-based PSTN switches, emerged Friday in a research note issued by Jefferies & Company Inc. analyst George Notter.

Notter's note centered on the role that VOIP equipment vendor Sonus Networks Inc. (Nasdaq: SONS) is playing in BT's 21CN program. Sonus was drafted into BT's plans in late 2007 to provide a specific application known as the Access Gateway Controller Function (AGCF), which provides a point of interaction between the core IP and access networks.

Notter believes Sonus jumped at that opportunity, "despite the fact that it was small and required significant R&D" to "curry favor in advance of a larger network transformation opportunity at BT."

Now, though, the analyst believes Sonus has lost that opportunity because BT is believed to be rethinking its 21CN voice network architecture. "More specifically, the carrier has suspended/halted the project as they're finding their network design (essentially replacing the access infrastructure with MSANs) is too expensive," he writes.

Notter adds: "We believe that any larger VoIP network transformation opportunity is gone... The news is disappointing. Just a few months ago, our industry contacts were telling us that Sonus had the inside track on winning this very large follow-on deal at BT."

BT Slows Down 21CN, Scraps Converged Service