The results of British Telecommunications Plc’s long awaited Pathfinder initiative was revealed yesterday in the most uncommunicative announcement this year. It was widely known that the company was planning a global managed network offering and that it was trying to get the Deutsche Bundespost Telekom and Nippon Telegraph & Telephone Corp to participate. In the event Pathfinder turns out to be a new subsidiary called Syncordia at present wholly Telecom-owned, although Ian Vallance described the Japanese phone giant as being very interested in participating while the German operator was said to remain enthusiastic about the venture, but has other issues to consider – such as the offence it would give to its sibling monopoly France Telecom. Enquiries as to the exact nature of these issues were answered by an embarrassed smile and a no comment, a response that set the tone for the rest of a presentation. True to predictions, Atlanta, Georgia-headquartered Syncordia is aimed at multinationals that want to hand all or part of their networks over to a facilities manager. It can handle voice, image and circuit switched data (packet switched data will be left to the BT Tymnet subsidiary). As it stands, the service has three main selling points: a single point of billing so that an international company avoids multi-currency bills from multiple countries; unified network management based on BT’s Concert network management station; and multilingual customer support from centres in Atlanta, London, Tokyo and Paris. There are quality of service agreements with financial penalities if Syncordia fails to deliver. The company will offer a three tiered service: managed links – essentially managed private leased lines; managed private network services virtual private networks with bandwidth on demand and management carried out by Syncordia; and Network Operations Management Services which piles full facilities management on top of the other offerings. As to customers, BP Chemicals and the Amadeus air reservation network are in negotiations, and IBM Corp may hand some European operations over the Syncordia. The company says that it has built a highly redundant core network with fibre used where-ever possible to connect 70 major centres around the world. Access nodes can be deployed virtually anywhere in the world according to John Skinner, vice-president of network operations. But where are these 70 centres? What is meant by virtually? And where does the backbone run? The comp any wouldn’t say, nor could it say in which countries the services are available. Sim ilar foot-shuffling greeted questions on levels of investment, staffing and even who manufactured the network switches. One snag is that though the new BT subsidiary may be technically able to provide the ser vices, regulations in most countries prev ent it. Voice traffic, in particular re mains strictly regulated ouside of the UK and the US and while the situation is imp roving in Europe, the progress is slower in the Pacific Rim. In essence, Syncordia could prove a useful service for companies with links between the UK and the US, but it appears to be little more than a state ment of intent for the rest of the world.
