21CN = 21st Century Network by British Telecom.

BT have announced their plans for expanding their 21st Century Network, known as 21CN, to more of the country.

Current deployment is to around 40% of the population and they aim to extend this to around 55% of homes and businesses by Spring 2010, and 75% by Spring 2011 depending on customer demand.

The extension of 21CN out to more exchanges will mean more users will be able to get broadband at up to 24Mb (BT estimate 20 million homes and businesses) and the roll out of next-generation fibre services such as fibre to the home/cabinet can expand to these areas also.

There is of course a caveat. As ever, not everyone will see speeds of up to this 24Mb as they are heavily dependent on distance to the exchange.

We will be ordering new lines on 21CN and switching existing eligible lines to 21CN from now onwards. This will ensure that we are in a position to launch higher speed products and allow the regrade of existing lines to their maximum speed potential.

There is a short stabilisation period and potential for a very short downtime but there will be no change to user names, passwords or IP addresses. Much of the change would occur out of hours. Based on tests to date we believe that benefits will include faster fault diagnosis as well as the potential for improved speeds.

It is important to understand that at this stage our gradual switch of lines to 21CN will not have any effect on the current product specification and price. New product details and any price implications will be launched in the coming months.

This is the start of an exciting process which will ultimately benefit us and our customers.

For more information on 21CN please follow this link, www.btplc.com/21cn/