BT to generate billions in revenue by sharing 21CN expertise globally

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Barely a week has passed since BT announced that it has started transferring users in South Wales across to its 21st century network (21CN) and the telecommunications giant is already planning to share the benefit of its experience with other operators around the globe.

But analysts aren't as excited about BT's grand plans as the telco is, suggesting that it won't make as big a splash as it hopes.

Turkey will be the first country to follow BT's lead in this area in the form of operator Turk Telecom, in a market the telco thinks will be worth more than €38 billion over the next five years.

Last Tuesday, a school girl from Wick, a village near Cardiff, was the first person to make a phone call using the new network, which is the result of a £10 billion programme of investment.

Now the telco wants to share the wealth of its knowledge.

Today it launched its 21C Global Venture (21C GV) business unit, with the aim of helping communications companies around the world to design and expedite the creation of their own next generation networks (NGNs).

Under the new business unit's BT 21C Transformation Services umbrella, the company will offer a range of offerings from initial auditing and consultancy assistance right the way through to full-scale implementation and operation.

Analysts are in no doubt that BT will generate revenue from this venture, but they are sceptical about just how much impact the new launch will have.

"We are less than sanguine about this, for lots of reasons, said Mike Cansfield, Telecoms Strategy practice leader at analyst Ovum.

"BT believes its NGN programme is way out in front of everyone else in the world - it is not. KPN, Verizon, Telenor, Telecom Italia and Bell Canada are all on the same page. This market is not virgin territory - other consultancies, systems integrators, and vendors (such as Ericsson, Alcatel-Lucent and Huawei) have been advising operators on this for some time."

Cansfield added: "They are also arguably better placed, with established sales channels and reputation for this type of work. This does not mean to say that BT is a novice in this respect - it has for years offered advice of this type (through Telconsult) - but it has never been big business. Whilst BT can claim considerable practical expertise in design, build, and operation of NGN little of this is exclusive to itself. So whilst we can understand the attraction of such a market to BT, we feel it is a little naïve of BT to think it can cut a leading figure on the world stage just because it is a big player in its own garden in the UK."

Despite receiving a mixed bag of criticism and acclaim for its achievements so far, BT is buoyant with confidence that there will be global demand for its knowledge.

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