What Is The 21CN And How Might It Affect Your Telephone Systems?

The argument could be made that the advent of IP telephony has sounded the death knell for analogue telephone systems, and with advantages in terms of costs and versatility IP telephone seems best qualified to answer the specific requirements of global business. But is this completely true, and is there life in analogue telephone systems yet?

Well in fact, the future of telecommunications may not be as clear-cut as current trends may have you believe, and much of the sea-change that is currently taking place may well be reversed in 2011 – why exactly? In 2011 BT are set to rejuvenate their current network by implementation of their “21st Century Network”, which will see the migration of analogue systems to more modern IP telephone systems.

In terms of current analogue systems, the 21CN should be able to accommodate them, and will provide businesses with the features of digital telephony, such as IP phone calls, without the need for an expensive infrastructure overhaul – the migration of analogue to digital systems should happen seamlessly.

This means that rather than overhauling your analogue telephone systems today, it might be wise to wait until 2011, or to whenever 21CN is implemented in your area, thereby saving yourself the cost and effort of having to implement ISDN systems yourself.

Sound too good to be true? There are potential issues, notably with the implementation of such a massive network, and essentially brand new technology on such a large scale, there is always the risk of major “multi-hour” outages during its first few months at least.