BT

BT CTO’s departure spotlights IT-centric carrier changes

There may never be a clearer indicator of the change in the carrier market than the departure of BT’s Matt Bross, and the fact that there will no longer be a CTO at BT. The role is being absorbed into the CIO role as the activity merges into a new IT-centric division.

The CIO, Al-Noor Ramji, heads the new Innovate and Design unit that seems to be an integration of web, platform, network and OSS issues and is really more an operations group with IT responsibility. We think it is very clear that BT realizes that software, partnerships, platforms and OSS/BSS are now more central to its operations and profitability than its network.

BT’s 21st Century Network (21CN) has been in transition for two years, and we think the notion will gradually be phased out.

BT sends signal on future voice services

A securities analyst has reported that BT may be slow-rolling 21CN and may in particular be rethinking its notion of migrating from TDM/PSTN voice to VoIP, at least in the near term. The information came out as it related to the impact that a VoIP cutback might have on Sonus. Obviously it could be significant.

What could be more significant is why this might happen. On one hand, the TDM plant is more depreciated than ever, and so barriers to replacement are falling. Yet there’s nothing as cheap as something you own that has no residual value to write off against your top line. Balanced against this is that operating costs for aging equipment typically grow. So at some point, you must assume BT would have to change.

The most logical starting point here is that it makes no sense to do something that involves TDM-to-IP conversion; you are forced to invest in the gateways. But if you have any TDM circuits, you can’t avoid that. Thus, we think that the likely issue here is a migration to packet voice for wireline and wireless, eliminating circuit technology in one sweep.

That would imply, in our view, that BT might synchronize three things before moving forward: 4G/LTE, FMC/femtocells and wireline migration to VoIP in some form. The question is what form. There are indicators that a P2P voice model, or at any rate something other than a SIP model, might be cheaper to deploy. Given Skype would likely offer voice services on any OTT-ready smartphone and over all home broadband, it makes no sense to spend a lot on your own voice program; you will have to match the Skype price or lose.

NGN services architecture — stalled out

Danish carrier TDC is the latest to get into the API program to attempt to secure developer support to expand service features and flexibility, but the offering is still very limited.

The problem with “third-party access” has been as much what is available for access as how to access it. Most of the players, including BT, have exposed a relatively small number of mobile-related features and have used an API that is substantially based on Parlay.

We believe that more modern and “seminal” features have to be exposed and a simpler API used, but the barrier to this is lack of an effective next-generation network (NGN) services architecture. There is no easy way to create or manage composable features, and standards to support the process are stalled despite years of effort.

PBT setback follows Verizon and BT announcements

Verizon and BT have both announced their commitment to use MPLS as the service architecture for enterprise services and converged services, abandoning their consideration of PBT for the role. We had reported earlier that BT was being lobbied heavily by Cisco and Juniper to make this move, so the decision there is not a surprise. Further, Verizon had never seriously considered PBT for a region-wide deployment according to our sources; however PBT is still being explored in the metro area. There has been no loss of momentum for PBT trials according to what we are hearing, but there is no question that these two announcements will make things harder for PBT vendors, erasing the groundswell of momentum they had previously enjoyed.