The UK has shown a remarkable appetite for new communications services. Broadband has become a mass market service - it is the fastest growing consumer technology service of all time and the UK is one of the world’s leading broadband markets.
Enabled by 21CN, this consumer hunger for more powerful and more integrated services will be satisfied with a rich array of information and entertainment services delivered to whatever device the customer chooses, wherever they happen to be.
Complementing the rapid developments in consumer electronics, home entertainment and broadband content creation, 21CN will underpin the delivery of the newest communications services - from higher-speed broadband to mobility solutions of a sophistication and power as yet unimagined by the average user.
Services based on the convergence of voice, mobility, video, data and content are now being developed and launched. These include, for example, BT Vision - our next generation television service. It puts the viewer in control by combining the appeal of TV with the interactivity of broadband. Customers are able to watch what they want when they want and not be tied to TV schedules. BT Fusion is the mobile phone service which switches to a broadband landline when the user arrives home or, for business users, at the office.
21CN supports and actively encourages an open approach to innovation. For example, Ribbit - the Silicon Valley-based 'telco 2.0' company that BT purchased in 2008 - has been fully integrated with 21CN. The technology brings together communications over mobile phones, landlines, desktop applications and internet applications and gives us the ability to integrate voice – the most complex of all capabilities – into the solutions and services we can deliver for our customers.
Already enterprise customers through Salesforec.com have the ability for audio messages to be transcribed into searchable text and BT will soon be introducing capabilities that enable the user to manage voicemail like e-mail from the desktop for example. Additionally we are planning to enable applications providers to ‘talk’ directly to our broadband network which will result in applications triggering broadband line characteristics best suited to an end user activity.
Increasingly 21CN will offer customers more and more control over their services, enabling them to customise and personalise the services they want in real-time.