LONDON-BT, the leading U.K. fixed-line carrier, said it selected eight telecom equipment suppliers for its next-generation network that will see phones that work over both fixed and mobile networks, among other services. The network is called 21st Century Network or 21CN.
BT plans to spend $19 billion on the network during the next five years.
Japan’s Fujitsu and China’s Huawei will supply the access domain that will link BT’s existing access network with the new network. Huawei and Ciena were chosen to supply the optical electronics in the transmission domain.
Alcatel, Cisco and Siemens are preferred suppliers for metro nodes to provide routing and signaling for the new network.
Lucent is a preferred supplier for core nodes providing high capacity and cost-efficient connections between metro nodes. Lucent said in a statement it will work with Juniper Networks on the network.
L.M. Ericsson was selected in the i-node domain, the intelligence that controls the services.
