In June last year, BT chose Marconi and Canadian vendor Nortel Networks to build the optical network, which would be powered by dense wave division multiplexing technology. But a BT spokesman confirmed that the operator has put all of the business Marconi’s way.
The deal will involve the provision of SDH (Synchronous Digital Hierarchy) and photonics equipment and will be worth around GBP800 million initially according to a BT spokesman, with around GBP200 million accounted for by the SDH technology. However, it is difficult to determine how much the deal will eventually be worth to Marconi as it is volume-related and depends on future bandwidth demand.
A spokesman for Marconi said that the deal was expected to be worth around GBP2 billion ($3 billion) to the vendor over the five year period when it was first announced in June 2000. But now the company anticipates that it will be worth significantly more than this.
Marconi added that BT’s optical network is expected to be one of the largest in the world. The spokesman said that Marconi would supply total solutions to BT, from network planning, the provision of hardware and software, through to network management.
