LONDON, UK, July 26, 2006 - Cisco Systems® announced today that BT's 21st Century Network (21CN) voice trials are being supported with Cisco® MGX series gateways deployed at 21CN metro nodes in Cambridge and Woolwich. The trunk network between the two sites is already carrying millions of calls. The trials are being conducted in preparation for BT's 21CN national rollout due to commence in November this year.

The Cisco MGX® series media gateways have been selected as the trunking gateway for BT's 21st Century Network (21CN). BT's 21CN is one of the world's largest Internet Protocol Next Generation Network (IP NGN) projects which will completely replace the UK's Public Switched Telephony Network with an IP-based network substantially by 2010.

Matt Beal, Director 21CN Core Convergence & Capabilities, BT Wholesale said: "BT's 21CN is setting the standard in our industry for the speed and scale of the PSTN to IP network migration programme. Cisco has brought in significant engineering expertise to help us to make continued progress towards meeting our delivery objectives."

"BT's 21CN has raised the bar for innovation in IP Next Generation Network developments," said Geraint Anderson, vice president of Service Providers in European Markets at Cisco, "and this has resulted in the introduction of new features in our MGX series products to support the European Telecommunications Standardization Institute's Internet Protocol Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) standards specification for full interoperability within BT's 21CN environment."

The Cisco MGX Series Media Gateways will operate within the 21CN Metro Nodes to interconnect BT's 21CN to the existing Public Switched Telephony Network. Cisco Transport Manager (CTM) will be used as the management platform for the MGX Series gateways and also provides an interface to the BT 21CN Operations Support System.