Working Group Updates

Consult21 Broadband and LLU Working Group

The latest meeting of Broadband and LLU working group – chaired by Gavin Young from Bulldog – was attended by representatives from 21 different companies. The group leads on detailed discussions on the migration of existing Broadband and LLU products to the 21st Century Network (21CN) and covers all aspects of Broadband portfolio including IPstream, Datastream and LLU.

Currently the group is focusing on how the 21CN network will be implemented including the migration of the current products and services and how BT is undertaking testing.

The main discussions of the group moving forward will be on:

• Gathering requirements and consulting on the specification of Next Generation Broadband

• The detail behind the migration of existing Broadband and LLU products to the 21st Century Network

• Suggesting pricing methodologies. 

All BT customers are very welcome to attend the next meeting on 12th March 2006 especially if they have current or future broadband plans. 

For further information please contact tom.saville@bt.com

Consult21 Point to Point Working Group

John Lee from Cable and Wireless chaired the 3rd meeting of the Point to Point Working Group. The group covers data products such as Retail Private Circuits, Partial Private Circuits, BES and WES.

John is keen to encourage those attending the meeting to become more actively involved as ‘2006 is the year when 21st Century Network would happen’. He went on to say that if Call Providers wanted to influence aspects of the programme, they needed to make sure issues were aired and discussed.

To date the group has covered topics such as:

• The future of the SDH network and SDH Points of Handover

• The unique needs of the Utilities as end user customers and how these will be safeguarded during the migration of products to 21CN.

Work continues on progressing three Industry Statements of Requirements covering Partial Private Circuits and Multi-Services Interconnect.

Future meetings will include discussions on new 21CN products and more detailed plans for the migration of existing products on to the new network.

If you would like to become more involved in this working group or attend future meetings on March 29th please contact tom.saville@bt.com.

Consult21 Line Access Working Group

The inaugural meeting of the Consult 21 Line Access Working Group was held on 12 April 2006, chaired by Justin Orde of Spitfire. The group covers line products such as Wholesale Line Rental, ISDN and Select Services. It also covers Voice Line Access, formerly known as MSAN Voice Access.

The meeting discussed the Migration for Voice in 21CN and included information on voice plans for Pathfinder in the Cardiff area in November 2006.

A Voice Line sub committee also meet to gather requirements and consult on Voice Line Access. The target date for completion of the requirements work is end March 2006.

Moving forward, discussions will include products in this area that will be withdrawn as well as replacement or planned replacement 21st Century Network products.

The next meeting of both groups is on 24th April 2006 at BT Centre in London. For more details, please contact tom.saville@bt.com

Consult21 Conformance Testing Working Group

BT released to Communication Providers, its 21CN Testing Proposal for Obligatory Products on 15th February and its release marks an important milestone in the 21CN programme. Dwight Davis, Director of Technology and Testing took some of BT’s Communication Provider customers through the proposal’s key details at an Information Exchange Event at the BT Tower on 20th February.

For Dwight, Testing is a key component of ensuring that both BT and Communication Provider are operationally ready for End Customer migration to 21CN. The key to ensuring an effective testing regime is to make sure that all Communication Providers who wish to be, are involved in the development and agreement of the Testing Programme. With this in mind, Consult21 is launching a new Working Group – the Conformance testing Working Group to provide a single focal point for all consultation on Testing. This new Working group will manage the three phase consultation outlined in the Testing Proposal:

• Pre-consultation focussing on the testing framework and approach running until 1st March

• Consultation focussing on agreeing standard or “Core tests” which BT will run on behalf of Industry between 14th March and 19th May

• Execution focussing on test results which will run from the 19th May onwards.

If you would like more information on this working group, please contact liz.e.walsh@bt.com

Consult21 Interconnect & Portfolio Working Group

The Interconnect and Portfolio Working Group is currently focusing on 2 key areas. 

The first being to understand customers’ requirements for two specific 21CN interconnect products.

• An interconnect circuit product to allow a Communication Providers (CP’s) Next Generation Network (NGN) to connect to BT’s NGN - known as a  Multi-service Interconnect Link.  These links will need to be a single product that can deal with the full range of NGN services, unlike the current legacy network Interconnect Link products that are all separate with their own individual technology and pricing structures

• A replacement for the current PSTN product which is known as ‘PSTN Emulation’.

Each product means these is a large amount of technical and commercial detail to be agreed. The Consult21 team are hoping to have a firm view of the products by the end of March to allow to move forward with feasibility and design.

The second area of focus for the group is for new 21CN commercial models that offer a fair solution for all. For example, consultation is underway on a new Minutes Table to determine how many minutes a CP can send without incurring overflow charges.

For further information, please contact chris.evans@bt.com

Consult21 Network Structure Working Group

Over time, lots of terminology has been developed that reflects the individual platform that make up the current network. As 21CN will be a single platform covering all products, there needs to be a single set of terms that can apply universally to all products.  

Work is being undertaken by the Network Structure Working Group to form a common language for everyone, to aid understanding of the new NGN platform. The group intends to produce documents that can be shared by everyone in Consult21 to help understand this new NGN terminology.  

The group is also available to help any other Product Working Group with technical issues concerning the network. 

For further information, please contact chris.evans@bt.com