Europe : T-Mobile and BT Wholesale announced a new agreement that sees BT link thousands of T-Mobile's base station sites around the UK to the T-Mobile network.

The contract, potentially worth several hundred million pounds over the next five years, will deliver T-Mobile a cost-efficient and flexible next generation service to support its growth plans and help avoid any investment risk in building out its own capability.  
       
BT will connect thousands of T-Mobile's base stations around the UK to the central T-Mobile network. Leased lines will be used to connect these sites at first before an Ethernet-based service is introduced.

The new Ethernet service will further enhance the delivery of access and backhaul services to T-Mobile. It will be designed and built to be fully compatible with BT's 21st Century Network (21CN), the most advanced next generation network (NGN) in the world.  The service will provide T-Mobile with a key stepping stone towards developing new customer services based on next generation network technology. It will also provide T-Mobile with the network capacity required to support future bandwidth hungry mobile services based on High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) technology. These include Mobile TV and music and video downloads.

T-Mobile has selected the managed network solution from BT as an alternative to building its own radio access transmission network, allowing it to benefit from reduced risk and reductions in capital and operational expenditure.

Emin Gurdenli (inset ), Technology Director, T-Mobile said, “By partnering with BT, we are able to achieve cost savings and focus on our core business while BT takes care of our access  backhaul requirements. This approach also means that we have the opportunity to control our future cost base more in line with business performance. Another winning factor for BT was that the promise of  21CN Ethernet  development allows us to  plan our future network requirements allowing for extra capacity  and supporting T-Mobile’s  development  of  new next generation services for our customers.”

Brian Fitzpatrick, MD BT Wholesale Markets, said, “Service providers want to drive revenue growth without the need to make upfront capital and operational investments.  Choosing a supply agreement with BT provides economies of scale, flexibility and ability to upgrade to new technologies quickly and easily. The contract win with T-Mobile further underlines BT's strength in delivering managed network solutions and access network infrastructure. One of our major aims in building 21CN is to take our communications provider customers with us, to allow them to introduce exciting new products and services enabled by next generation technology. By migrating T-Mobile across to our 21CN platform and services over the life of the contract, we are able to help them make the next step in their journey towards a next generation network strategy.”