BT completes ground-breaking IP voice trial

Telecoms provider BT has completed its pioneering trial of VoIP which in 2005 carried the first calls over an all-IP infrastructure.

This marked the start of the company's upgrade of telephony systems in the UK to its 21st Century Network (21CN) plan by connecting exchanges in central London, Woolwich and Cambridge just through internet protocols.

"This trial has been hugely successful in informing our plans for the nationwide deployment of 21CN," said Matt Beal, chief technical officer of BT Wholesale.

"Its completion demonstrates the tremendous strides that we've made... in bringing 21CN from concept to reality for end-customers."

Handling around 500,000 calls per day, the BT trial found that customers still received high call quality over the IP network that was the same, if not better, as they would using the existing PSTN network.

While this trial has ended, the project is continuing with areas of South Wales currently using the upgraded lines and 350,000 lines in total set to be upgraded by the end of the year.