BT Group simplifies network for quicker live services

Adopting a standardised and cloud-native approach to its business for a “more sophisticated fault-discovery process, coupled with the ability to bring services to market faster and improve customer experience”, BT Group’s Digital Unit has revealed that it is working with Blue Planet on a network orchestration and simplification project across its consumer and business products.

The move is ultimately intended to improve customer experience with services going live quicker, reducing engineering effort and helping to speed new propositions to market.

In practice, it means that when a customer hits “buy” on a broadband product, the design, configuration and activation of network services, from local network through to BT’s 21C core network, to systems belonging to broadband provision division Openreach and the wider internet, will be automated by the Blue Planet platform.

Similarly, if changes are made in service, as is common for BT’s business customers, Blue Planet can streamline the process of implementing those adjustments, adding new capacity, lines or capabilities dynamically.

Blue Planet describes this simplification as “dramatic”, eliminating more than six legacy systems currently delivering service orchestration, reducing engineering cost and complexity, and significantly reducing the amount of time customers need to spend completing orders.

It is designed to allow BT Group to develop and deploy new propositions more rapidly, as the network orchestration stage of product development is substantially simplified. Similarly, BT’s business customers are said to be able to experience more rapid, in-service change.

The standardised, cloud-native approach to service order management and orchestration adheres to the TM Forum Open Digital Architecture. This is claimed to make it easier for BT Group to manage fault discovery and self-healing, driving its wider “AI Ops” ambition and further boosting customer experience.

The new systems are already in production in BT Group’s Consumer business, where they are orchestrating the delivery of EE Fibre broadband services.

“Using strategic technology systems to boost customer experience is a key goal of our modernisation programme,” said BT Group’s chief architect of digital, Josie Smith, commenting on the deployment. “Automation, simplification and consolidation is a key route through which we will unlock productivity and speed. With Blue Planet’s help, we are cutting legacy costs and processes and speeding time to market across our businesses.”

Blue Planet has also committed to joint development efforts with BT Group’s Digital unit on AWS, the Group’s preferred cloud supplier for business application workloads.

“With open, cloud-native automation at the forefront of its OSS modernisation, Blue Planet will support BT Group’s ambition to simplify their operations and digitise the customer experience,” said Blue Planet senior vice-president and general manager Joe Cumello.

“This collaboration is already delivering huge learnings and dividends and has even greater potential as we widen our roll-out across BT’s consumer and business customer journeys.”