The UKs next-gen broadband is being threatened by BTs 21CN

According to a TalkTalk senior executive, the leisurely attitude towards ironing out regulatory problems and the pace of BT 21CN could be putting the future broadband networks at risk.

Chairman of the broadband and home phone company, Neil McArthur said, whilst talking at the CMA annual conference recently held in London, “If BT 21CN doesn’t arrive in a reasonable timeframe – I’m sorry to talk about a fellow carrier here – but seriously, it’s so important to the interconnect of every other carrier in the country, it’s a real threat to the deployment of other NGNs [next-generation networks].”

The overhaul of the core network for BT from standard PSTN lines to a singular all-IP based voice and data network is called 21CN.

The 21CN website for the telco has advised that the task is “a gargantuan technical, logistical and operational programme”, and this is why the plan for rolling out 21CN by the end of 2010, which was BT’s original plan, has now slipped.

The focus on smoothing the way for next-generation networks was less, said McArthur, and this is due to the amount of media and government attention that the next-generation access (NGA) gets and that the Digital Britain interim report from Lord Carter, the communications minister included a universal broadband access by 2012 provision.

He said “NGA is a very political thing – it’s a big headline government thing – but until we actually get the NGNs working having NGAs without NGNs is really pointless and really we do need both,” he said. The criticism of progress of 21CN was, however, rejected by a spokeswoman for BT.

She said “I’m not too sure of how he’s claiming that the rollout of 21CN threatens the deployment of other next-generation networks when we have next-generation products up and running on our network that we’re selling to other communications providers right now. There’s been lots of progress with 21CN over the last year or so. We’ve already completed the build of our core network so the core infrastructure in the UK is now 100 per cent complete and that’s massive progress. More importantly, we’ve also got products live on 21CN at the moment.”