Alcatel-Lucent Partners with BT for Evolution of 21CN

By Susan J. Campbell, TMCnet Contributing Editor

Alcatel-Lucent has entered into a five-year agreement with BT (News - Alert) for the evolution of its 21st Century Network (21CN). Considered the foundation of BT's IP transformation to enhance customer experience, the 21CN will accelerate time-to-market for next generation services.

Company officials said that this project leverages Alcatel-Lucent's (News - Alert) High Leverage Network architecture and transformational services. It is expected to further evolve BT's infrastructure and will allow the company to expedite network convergence, increase capacity and deliver content cost effectively.

In addition, the 21CN will help BT prepare to introduce new video-rich services to an expanded base of wholesale and retail subscribers. Customers in more than 170 countries will benefit from the development of this project and will help BT to strengthen its position in the U.K. by increasing performance, capacity and bandwidth to a larger customer base.

"21CN is a huge transformational program. It's about providing a network for the future which requires a game-changing approach." said George Nazi, managing director, BT 21CN Core Convergence (News - Alert). "Alcatel-Lucent came up with an innovative solution that will help us keep 21CN at the forefront of innovation and radical change."

The demand for video-rich content continues to rapidly grow, making it more critical to accelerate the transition to a unified smart IP network, as well as an open application environment that will enable new business models. The 21CN will enable BT to increase revenues and reduce costs while migrating to new business models that offer much greater profitability.

"BT's 21CN is one of the most complete, exciting and ambitious business transformation programs anywhere in the global telecommunications industry," said Lakh Jemmett, vice president of Alcatel-Lucent North Europe. "We are proud that our High Leverage Network architecture is enabling BT to transform their business, transform their networks, and deliver powerful new services in a scalable, cost-effective way."

An innovative end-to-end transport solution delivered by Alcatel-Lucent supports its HLN vision and aligns well with BT's business drivers. This solution tightly integrates IP and optical transport resources as well as professional services to help BT manage the rapid growth in network traffic while cutting operational and maintenance costs.

BT continues to face a growing residential subscriber base, creating greater demand for bandwidth expansion. As the company strives to meet this demand and prepare for new rich media services, it is also taking an innovative approach its residential IP service delivery architecture.

Traditionally, Broadband Network Gateways were centralized, which created a bottleneck in the network that was only getting worse. Now, these gateways will be distributed closer to subscribers using next generation service routers. As a result, customers will enjoy increased capacity and performance, while the operator receives the benefit of a streamlined and simplified operations process.

In other Alcatel-Lucent news, the company announced last week that it has "significantly" extended its Genesys (News - Alert) portfolio of contact center solutions by further integrating key products into a multiplatform, open environment.

Earlier in April, the company launched a new release of its Genesys customer service software, an open, comprehensive suite for customer interactions. Genesys 8 software is designed to enable a single, coordinated customer conversation across channels and contact points.

Susan J. Campbell is a contributing editor for TMCnet and has also written for eastbiz.com. To read more of Susan's articles, please visit her columnist page.

Edited by Erin Harrison

(source: http://next-generation-communications.tmcnet.com/topics/nextgen-voice/articles/84031-alcatel-lucent-partners-with-bt-evolution-21cn.htm)

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