Meanwhile, other countries are moving forward!

Computer Weekly reports that BT has chosen the eight preferred suppliers for it's ambitious 21st Century Network project. In case you missed it, BT's aim is to take the entire telephone plant throughout the UK and convert it from analog to IP-based service. This would dramatically increase efficiency, not to mention opening the door for great new innovative services.

As an aside, when we first moved to the UK in 1995, we were struck with the advanced state of telecommunications in the country and indeed throughout Europe. This was partly because of the early adoption of GSM, which allowed the mobile phone to become ubiquitious and partly due to the innovative approaches used by BT and SkyTV, the major satellite provider in the UK. Perhaps it is just the closeness to Europe and more of a focus on international markets, but we found it interesting that when we went travelling we could transfer our home or office phone to ring directly on almost any telephone in the world! As they say on TV, don't try this at home...in the US our service providers don't really seem to even want us to forward our calls from one state to another. We have no provision at all in the US to forward calls internationally without going through some sort of external service based in the US.

So it comes as no surprise that BT is pushing such an initiative. We all like to carp about our local Telcos, and BT get's it's share of bad press due to stupid ommissions and policies like the rest, but the bottom line is they are an innovative company. Couple this with Tony Blair's "BroadBand Britain" initiative, and you have created a real climate of innovation.

Certainly in the US we are lucky to have the emphasis on technology and the innovative spirit to move forward in impressive leaps. We hope to see these initiatives in the UK, our adopted second home, continue and expand to other countries throughout the world. Who knows? Maybe even Mexico will come around!