BT Comunicaciones, the 50-50 joint venture company formed by British Telecommunications Plc and Banco Santander SA, celebrated its first wedding anniversary with the opening of a network operations centre, which will control and monitor its 37-node national data network 24 hours a day. This network currently handles average daily traffic of 643Mb – 25,000 connections a day – and offers the company’s 200 or so clients almost 100% availability. It will reach full capacity in 1998, when 3,000 lines will be supported. The modular architecture ensures that the failure and subsequent substitution of any one element does not affect other elements, while 95% of faults can be resolved directly from Madrid. A client service centre forms part of the new complex, attending to technical queries, billing and new services. The company claims all calls will be answered within 15 seconds. BT Comunicaciones forecasts turnover of around $880m over the next 10 years and the backlog of business is currently worth $48m. Staff numbers will rise to 182 from 154.
