Privy Council Review of intercept as evidence: report - Official ...

CHAPTER VI - NEW COMMUNICATIONS TECHNOLOGY
WHAT IS IT?
107. Over the next several years the worldwide public telecommunications
network will undergo a profound change. Hitherto almost all telephone
networks have been circuit-switched: whenever a call is made the provider
has set up a dedicated circuit (a combination of wires, channels within fibre
optic, microwave or satellite trunks, and radio links to individual phones) which
connects the callers. For as long as the call lasts the callers have exclusive
use of this dedicated circuit. While other services than ordinary telephony
(such as data) may be available, they are generally under the control of one of
a small number of suppliers, who provide both the service and the underlying
network, and do any necessary processing.
108. Within the next 5 years we expect that most communications in the UK
will instead be delivered using Internet Protocol (IP) 4 . There are strong
commercial forces driving this revolution, and unlike the so-called ‘Telecoms
Bubble’ in the late 1990s these plans are well founded. The same economic
forces will drive all Communications Service Providers (CSPs), in the UK and
abroad, to make similar changes to their networks, albeit not always in the
same timescale.
109. This process is being driven by – and in turn will enable – a rapid
predicted growth in the volume of communications. The Home Office have
gathered data from various sources, which predicts that the number of
discrete communications events per year in the UK will nearly double in ten
years, from some 230 billion in 2006 to nearly 450 billion in 2016. The bulk of
that growth will be in messaging and non-voice communications using IP –
the trend for voice communications (fixed and mobile) is relatively static.
110. In the UK this process is exemplified by British Telecom’s move to its
21 st Century Network, in which it is investing £10 billion over the period 2007-
2011. On the core network itself all traffic will be IP based from the start;
there will be no differentiation between voice and data. This IP network will
potentially allow its customers to access any communications service
(whether provided by BT or not) at broadband speed from any device, and will
link fixed and mobile networks. For BT customers only requiring a plain voice
telephony service, the signal will initially be converted from IP by BT before
entering the home, but it is expected that existing telephones will (over a
longer period) be replaced with cheaper IP devices able to exploit the vast
range of available services. Then all customers will access the core BT
network through a broadband link, regardless of the service they choose to
pay for.
111. The migration to IP will result in two fundamental changes.
Firstly CSPs will be carrying all voice (both mobile and fixed-line) using
IP based networks. Many users will not consciously choose to move to
4 The international standard used for delivering material across the Internet.
Chapter VI
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