Working Group Updates

The Consult21 programme provides consultation between BT, industry and the regulator on the introduction of BT’s 21st century network. Each month there are regular meetings to discuss current key topics and areas of interest. This month’s activity includes:

Implementation & Migration Working Group

A new structure has been put in place by Mike Cook, BT’s new Director for 21CN Customer Migration and industry co-chair.  Work of the group will now focus on two specific areas:

1. Customer Engagement – to ensure that Communication Providers  an appropriate engagement process in place via Consult21.  This will drive the delivery of the key operational and technical enablers identified within the joint BT and industry ‘Operational Enablers’ plan

2. Transfer Engineering – to carry out the physical migration activity.

In addition, plans to enable BT and industry to jointly track programme performance against agreed milestones has been put in place by BT’s new Migration Programme Manager for 21CN. In particular, these plans will track:

• Migration provisioning activity at a generic level for all Communication Providers on a ‘per DLE’ basis

• Operational enablers – the generic processes, templates etc which are being developed to support the migration provisioning activity plan

• Product readiness – tracking individual products (legacy or new) as they progress towards being sufficiently defined to enable migration planning.

As we move towards the introduction of the first phase of implementation in the Cardiff area in 2006, the work of this group is now likely to increase.

Customer Migration Communications Working Group

The Working Group has agreed to pursue a two-tier approach to end-user communications:

• Residential & business customers serviced through an independent call-centre solution to handle queries

• Corporate customers serviced through their Communication Providers using centrally agreed standard messaging.

Interconnect and Portfolio Working Group

BT and industry are currently considering proposals for interconnect products including Virtual Interconnect Circuits (VICs). The working group continues to seek agreement on how industry will recover the costs associated with migrating to 21CN. 

Point to Point Working Group

Aims to ensure that the data connectivity requirements identified by the working group are given the right level of focus in relation to the voice interconnect portfolio within BT. One key area is the point of handover for Partial Private Circuit type solutions.

Systems and Processes Working Group

This group is looking at the key interfaces between customers and BT. In particular how order handling and fault management will be handled.  Geoff Izzard from Telewest has been named as the new industry co-chair.

If you want to know more about the work of Consult21 please visit www.btwholesale.com/consult21.