The communications company is readying itself to support the first customers on its new platform during 2008.
Telecoms giant COLT today confirmed plans to move its customers to its next generation network (NGN) next year.
The company is in the final stages of vendor selection for the new single, three-layer IP and Ethernet-based network which, when completed and switched on, will give its business users a number of benefits including faster service speeds, the ability to add to and modify service provision and upgrade bandwidth of their own accord using an online portal.
COLT's NGN will span its 20,000km pan-European fibre network and feature a transport layer, service control layer and application layer, the latter of which help deliver new solutions to businesses such as unified communications, collaborative and mobility tools.
The new, open standards-based infrastructure will also help the company to incorporate new services and functionality from a wide pool of software vendors and bring those solutions to market more quickly as well as modifying them speedily post launch.
"We are accelerating our investment in network and data centres in the next two years to ensure our customers benefit from the best communications solutions for their business and the best possible customer experience," said Rakesh Bhasin, COLT's chief executive.
"COLT already has a sophisticated fibre network built around Europe's business centres and this latest development will enable us to offer customers more flexibility and innovative new communications tools, as well as the resilience they are used to with traditional networks. Ultimately our goal is to make telecommunications transparent, with customers being able to access any application they need, using any device, no matter where they are. This upgrade is a key step in our evolution towards that goal. We will also be upgrading our data centre footprint and will be able to communicate more in the near future."
Analysts looked upon COLT's news as positive but suggested that the real test is yet to come.
"COLT is doing everything it can to make networking life easier for its enterprise customers. The big question is how easy or difficult COLT and other operators will find it to use the NGNs being built by Europe's incumbent telcos, when the time comes to use them," said David Molony, principal analyst at Ovum.
"The issue is not interconnection, but the degree of support for applications services from another network. COLT's CTO says he wants to provide a plug-and-play environment for his customers' applications, and that this should be extended across all networks."
Molony added: "By standardising on Ethernet he has kept things simple and increased the chances of exchanging data effectively through the national NGNs (BT, Deutsche Telekom, KPN, Telekom Austria) where COLT needs to do that. But maintaining quality of service for each and every new application will not necessarily be so simple. NGN operators do not have applications management agreements with each other, so won't be able to guarantee QoS from day one."
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