Working Group Updates

Systems and Processes Working Group 

At the most recent Systems & Processes working group on 2 May the participants reviewed the recently released impact statement on Systems of Pathfinder. This exercise has given industry greater confidence that they will be able to continue to order, report faults and create bills on existing products throughout the Pathfinder programme with minimal changes. The document is available at www.btwholesale.com.

The Working Group had previously thought that it may be possible to reduce the frequency of meetings, but after reviewing and prioritising all outstanding and upcoming work packages, we have decided to maintain monthly meetings. The next Working Group is 6 May 2006.

If you would like more information on this working group, please contact tim.short@bt.com

Network Hooks & Common Capabilities Working Group 

The Working Group met on 24 April primarily to progress the division of work previously considered within this working group and more appropriate groups and bodies to continue the work outside of Consult21.

To summarise:

• A replacement forum will be set up and run by BT Wholesale Product Strategy in order to provide customers with BT Wholesale Common Capability and Product updates, particularly roadmaps to stimulate bi-lateral discussions between BT and CPs in developing new products based on BT’s 21st Century Network

• Applications and Systems to be discussed at Consult21 Systems & Processes working group

• Network Intelligence to be progresses through NGNUK

• Networking, Logical Control and Access to be progressed at the appropriate product Consult21 working groups, but be fulfilled by NICC.

Following agreement from the Consult21 Steering Board to allocate work in this manner, this working group will be closed. 

If you would like more information on this working group, please contact tim.short@bt.com

Pathfinder Experts

Pathfinder is an essential element of BT’s strategy to implement End Customer migration to 21CN in an assured manner.  To facilitate better industry wide migration planning, the Implementation & Migration Working Group has set up a new forum – Pathfinder Experts to lead discussions on:

• The definition of End Customer experience for Pathfinder

• The identification of appropriate benchmarks and definition of their success criteria within each of the Pathfinder Phases

• How success will be measured at each of the benchmarks.

The Pathfinder Experts will focus on the definition and development of a 'Pathfinder Long Learning process' which will help BT and Communication Providers identify and incorporate learning during Pathfinder and underpin preparations for Mass Migration (scheduled to commence in January 2008).

Concurrent with the publication by BT of its 21CN Implementation Strategy and Plan on 28 April, BT initiated a further consultation on the definition of the Pathfinder Entry and Exit criteria. The definition of these criteria will enable BT and Communication Providers to have clarity on what discussions need to be concluded prior to the start of Pathfinder and what Pathfinder itself needs to achieve, providing a solid framework for the ongoing discussions of the Pathfinder Experts. The consultation runs until the 2 June.

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

Implementation & Migration Working Group

The Implementation & Migration Working Group held its fourteenth meeting on 16 May co-chaired by Mike Cook (BT) and Chris Danzelman (C&W).  The session included a heavy focus on BT’s proposed methodology for the migration of the IPstream (ADSL variant) End Customer base to 21CN. The session considered the implications from a Transfer Engineering perspective migration activity:

• Within BT’s initial End Customer migrations within Pathfinder

• Between July and December 2006 when BT will be migrating 50% of the IPstream End Customer base to 21CN and creating a 21CN broadband footprint ahead of the migration of Voice Services and resulting in these End Customers having the facility to take advantage of higher bandwidth next generation services at an earlier date

• Within Mass Migration from January 2008 onwards when BT intends to migrate voice and broadband services in an integrated programme.

The session sparked a healthy debate with BT receiving positive feedback on the information it was sharing. The Working Group is planning to create a Broadband Migration Experts Group to enable a more detailed debate to take place on broadband migration with its first session planned for early June.

The next Implementation & Migration Working Group is on 20 June.

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

Interoperability Experts

The Interoperability Experts forum has set up the Conformance Testing Working Group to manage discussions and consultation on interoperability testing. Interoperability considers the engineering of and the way that services flow across network boundaries and therefore is of interest to Communication Providers (CPs) with Interconnect, LLU and number portability within their End Customer service portfolios.

To support the development of this Service Interoperability Testing Plan, the Interoperability experts have developed a consultation document to:

• Gain the broadest consensus on the approach developed by the Interoperability Experts to interoperability testing

• Gauge CPs willingness and ability to participate in interoperability testing.  This is in order that they can develop an appropriate interoperability testing programme based upon participants equipment/network configurations.

The closing date for this consultation is 9 June with responses being reviewed at a further experts session on 27 June.

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

Interconnect & Portfolio Working Group

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

Another critical area of work is the proposed Virtual Interconnection Capacity (VIC) product as an alternative to DLE interconnect. The key milestone now is to develop and agree a ‘Minutes Table’ that will govern how many minutes each customer can send on each circuit before paying overflow charges. There are a number of other aspects of the VIC product for which customers have requested changes, and BT is working hard to address these in the coming weeks.

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

Consult21 Network Structure Working Group

The current emphasis of this group is to develop an understanding of the issues related to interconnecting two Next Generation Networks, that may each have different internal architectures. The group is also developing a Network Information Publlication that will eventually provide comprehensive information about BT’s 21CN. This publication will provide other Communications Providers with all the technical information they need to interconnect with BT, in one place.

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