Commenting on the announcement, Entanet’s Chief Operations Officer James Blessing said: “To be selected as one of the three trialists is very exciting news for us. We’ve been extremely proactive in BT’s 21CN industry working group consultations. This involvement will provide us first with hand experience of its implementation and testing as well as a significant insight into the network’s performance from an end user experience perspective and will help us accelerate our own product development.“
The trial will start on 01 November 2007 from one of BT’s Birmingham exchanges before expanding to ten exchanges by January 2008, after which other CPs will be joining the trials. Steve Lalonde, Chief Technical Officer at Entanet, said: "We’ll be making financial, time and resource investments in our network to participate in the trial, which will give us a critical edge in planning ahead for our network as 21CN is rolled out. The experience and knowledge we’re going to gain is invaluable.”
Entanet is one of few communications providers in the market looking at 21CN seriously enough to consider developing of a portfolio of voice and data services that capitalise on this next generation network opportunity. It will see the company make a multi-million pound investment in its own network infrastructure, a move that will clearly differentiate it from other CPs whilst also enabling it to offer strongly competitive wholesale products to the channel.
Entagroup’s Chairman Jason Tsai said: "We’re delighted that Entanet is on the trial. We have the technical capability and financial stability to commit to such investment if the technology proves to be the best way for us to go forward. The trial will give us a unique 21CN experience, allow us to assess its potential and help us develop a competitive strategy going forward.”