The third phase contracts for British Telecom’s City Fibre Network are due to be announced towards the end of the month, with most of the mulitplexing equipment due to be delivered by STC and the switching equipment by Plessey, according to industry sources. Northern Telecom is thought to have been furiously bidding for the switching part of the contract, bolstered by its recent ?450m equity stake in STC Plc, which gave it 24% of the company, reciprocated with STC taking 40% of Northern Telecom Plc. British Telecom has so far spent ?70m on the project and is planning now to extend the network beyond the City of London to other regions of London as well as cities outside the UK capital. Tenders for the scheme are thought to be likely to come from now on in a series of tranches. There are currently four switches in place in the City, based on the System X architecture. They link some 37,000 miles of single mode cable, which were laid in 1987, covering an area from Kings Cross in the north to Elephant & Castle in the south, Covent Garden in the west and Wapping in the east. The system enables customers with a need for fast access to services such as graphics and high speed voice and data to bypass the public switched telephone network, and Telecom reckons it could provide savings of up to 40% on long-distance call charges. The project, first announced in 1986, marks a move by British Telecom towards fortifying itself against the onslaught from Mercury Communications, which has won some of its biggest City customers.
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