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NamePosition

Working together to minimise customer risk on migration to the 21st century network

Presentation for Emergency Services

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Purpose

• This presentation is for use by Communication Providers in order to raise the awareness of the 21CN migration programme with their Emergency Authorities

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21CN - Working together

• This presentation is made on behalf of the companies that provide communication services for emergency and other essential services in the UK

• They are BT, Cable and Wireless, Global Crossing and Kingston Communications

• We recognise the importance of working together to minimise customer risk

'Cautionary Statement - BT's 21st Century Network is still in the process of development and the subject of consultation. The information in this presentation may be subject to change'

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21CN - Why are we here today?• To promote awareness of 21CN • To offer reassurance that due care and consideration is being given to managing critical

services on the night of customer transfer• To confirm that as customer transfer approaches detailed local plans will be developed• We will look at the impact of transfer to 21CN:

– From the perspective of a member of the public– From an emergency service’s control room perspective

• To discuss next steps on actions required• Q&A

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21CN - What is the 21st Century Network?• 21CN - BT’s world leading, exciting and ambitious communications

transformation programme

• 21CN - a new secure and intelligent IP- based infrastructure to support new generations of communications services

• 21CN - will empower customers with control, choice and flexibility like never before

• 21CN - is not selective: customers in metropolitan & rural areas across the UK will benefit

• 21CN - is good for UKplc. Advanced communications networks provide the heartbeat for any modern society, & for any advanced economy, in the 21st century

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21CN - What does it mean?

• Involves the transfer of 30 million lines in more than 5,500 exchange sites over 5 years

• 21CN will carry both today’s and tomorrow’s voice, data, video-on-demand and broadband services on an IP-based network

• Except for areas of South Wales, cities and regions do not migrate to 21CN en masse

• Customer migration is by product set. For example, voice services migrate at different times to broadband services

• Customer migration within an exchange area is random: telephone number sequences are not grouped by street

• This affects ALL service providers who carry their products and services over BT lines

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21CN – It isn’t the internet• Fiction:• IP networking is ‘dangerous’ with viruses,

hackers, worms... being the norm• Facts:• 21CN is a private, carrier grade IP network

protected by firewalls and other technologies that is not open to the internet

• 21CN is a managed and controlled network subject to detailed planning rules and security measures

• The telecoms industry already manages many secure IP-based networks

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21CN - What is the impact on the public? • 21CN migration is being managed carefully

to minimise the unavailability of access to 999 and essential services

• Every customer and payphone line will have a break in service as they are disconnected from today's network and reconnected to 21CN

• 21CN migration involves technology and data changes. There will be an unavoidable short delay before service is resumed

• The number of necessary service breaks will be kept to a minimum and for the shortest required duration

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21CN - What is the impact on the public? • Engineering activity that affects customers’ services can take place

24/7 but wherever possible will take place during the night • Mobile phone services are not affected• BT Wholesale will be monitoring the network to ensure there are

no 999 voice calls in progress at the point of transfer• VOIP 999 calls in progress cannot be monitored• The network, processes, systems, functionality and compatibility

will be rigorously tested before the start of migration• During migration:

– customers will not be able to make or receive calls - including calls to the emergency services

– incoming callers during this period will hear ring tone – there will be no network announcements

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21CN - What does it mean for those receiving

emergency and safety critical calls? • Existing network signalling will be monitored on

the legacy network

• Migration will not be attempted if emergency/essential calls are in progress from fixed lines or payphones – but other calls in progress will be cut off

• Special measures will be taken to minimise the impact on providers of emergency and critical services

For example:

• 21CN rollout plans already take existing resilience arrangements into account

• Detailed local operational plans will be developed

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21CN - Special measures for ‘life & death’ service providers

• 21CN scheduling will ensure: – migrations impacting on 999 primary,

secondary and alternative routings will not coincide

– priority will be given to migrating Blue Light control centres on Tuesday/Wednesday, Wednesday/Thursday where possible

• To aid planning, emergency services will be told:– the week of their migration nine months

before – the night of their transfer three months

before• (Timescales will differ for Cardiff and the

surrounding area)

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21CN - Clear, consistent communications

• Pan-industry agreed communications programme for all end users

Cor

pora

tes

• Direct briefings by communications providers

– one phone number to call: 0800 030 4000 – one website to visit: www.switchedonuk.org– customised door drops across the UK

– using centrally agreed briefing materials

Programme already

underway

Industry is proactively informing organisations that provide services to vulnerable people such as RNIB, citizens advice bureau

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21CN - What experience tells us

• Changes are made to the network every day: • unnoticed by the vast majority of customers• in many cases the same will apply for 21CN

migration

• Based on previous transfers, assumptions and trialling, we believe the majority of customers lines will be impacted by a small number of service interruptions:

• around 80 per cent of PSTN customers will experience two breaks in service

– Some customers will experience greater and longer breaks in service – but these are exceptions and not the rule

• Transfer methods during the first phase of customer migration will be monitored and processes refined

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21CN - Testing customer equipment

• BT expects the vast majority of customer equipment to work in the same way with 21CN

• A comprehensive testing programme is underway

• Includes telephone handsets, analogue and broadband modems, fax and answering machines, corporate switch boards, security, telecare and telemetry equipment…

• More than 2200 devices are on the 21CN test database

•Results of testing to date can be found on the switched-on web site

www.switchedonuk.org

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21CN - Defining numbers critical to public safety

• Nominations made by the telecoms industry• Industry reviewed and prioritised nominations

- final decision rests with BT Operate• List will be maintained throughout the 21CN

migration period

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21CN - Emergency and critical numbers

• Our priority is to maintain public access to defined ‘life and death’ services during 21CN migration. These services are:

– 999– 112– Text Direct 18000/18001– ChildLine – Samaritans – NHS Direct /NHS 24 (Scotland)– 101 Single Non Emergency Number– Transco - gas escape reporting number – Anti-terrorist hotline

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21CN - Timeline to migrationNight of Transfer

Week of Migration advised

- 9 months

Night of Migration advised

- 3 months

EAs advise BT of pre-planned events

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EAs advise BT of

pre-planned events

*Not to scale

EA

s advise BT of

significant emerging

incidents

- 4 weeks 22.00

on night

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21CN - Technical and operational management• On transfer night – • 21CN migration control centre (MCC) will manage the customer migration processes including monitoring for 999 calls in progress

• This MCC will link into network monitoring and service management operations

• The MCC will issue communications to advise of start and end of ‘on the night’ migration activities to CPs

• Established incident procedures come into play in event of unforeseen circumstances, for example, floods or third party cable damage

• It will be possible to revert to the legacy network for up to seven days after migration – however this intervention will only come into play in exceptional circumstances

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21CN - Considerations for emergency services

• 21CN migration is a scheduled engineering rearrangement with a similar impact to any other loss of service

• Public access to ‘Blue Light’ services will be reliant on the use of primary, secondary and alternative routing

• EAs need to monitor and understand the impact of change on their internal infrastructure and ability to deploy resources

• EAs need to review their own business continuity plans including onward connect numbers

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21CN – Next steps

•Your 999 liaison manager will work with you to ensure you have effective plans in place to manage your control room/s through 21CN migration•If these breaks in service affect operations, contingency plans need to be made.•Call Divert for Incoming traffic ( not 999) to another site

•Capacity and staff ?•Cannot be changed between 22:00 and 09:00 or until successfully migrated

•Outgoing traffic, an alternate route/technology that is not affected by service breaks

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Key Links

• For general 21CN information on 21CN: www.btplc.com/21CN

• To understand more about your specific 21CN upgrade, visit the industry communications campaign website at: www.switchedonuk.org

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21CN - Key points

• 21CN - UK rollout started in November 2006 and spreads across the UK over the next 5 years

• 21CN - industry is taking customer migration seriously and sensitively managing emergency and critical services on the night of customer migration

• 21CN - industry welcomes your input, advice and support

• We look forward to working together to successfully deliver 21CN across the UK

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&AQ

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The following are a selection of slides and material that can also be used in the main presentation to help explain the 21CN migration For up to date information always refer to the Consult 21 web sitewww.btwholesale.com/consult21

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21CN – Typical Impacts

• As well as on the night impacts there are pre migration activities that take place that also incur service breaks.

• All the impacts from transfer engineering onto 21CN are captured on the TE Impact Matrix which is published on the consult 21 web pages.

• www.btwholesale.com/consult21

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Typical ‘on the night’ interruptions that customers may experience

Activity Maximum service outage time

PSTN migration

Outgoing calls not possible 3 minutes

Incoming calls not possible 30 minutes

ISDN migration

Outgoing calls not possible 10 minutes

Incoming calls not possible 30 minutes

Broadband migration

Voice and data calls affected. Incoming and outgoing calls not possible

10 minutes

•Refer to the TE Impact Matrix for specific and up to date information

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21CN Reliability, continuity and resilience

• 21CN is a private IP network, NOT the Internet

• 21CN separates network and services

• 21CN is engineered with high availability and resilience

• 21CN Assurance agreed with CSIA

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Providing assurance through testing

• Comprehensive 21CN trials and testing programme is underway

• Products and services will be tested from a functionality and operational perspective, for example: – Customers’ ability to place a call to the emergency

operator– Testing to ensure network resilience is the same or

better than today– The ability of EAs to take and handle 999/112

calls, including the CLI facility– End to end testing

• Testing covers services that cross network boundaries, that is, 999 calls transferred from one CP’s network to another

• Customer premises equipment is being tested and the results published