BT has greatest market presence in European wan services

In its first full evaluation of the European WAN Services marketplace “The Forrester Wave: European WAN Services, Q2 2008 (April 2008)”, independent industry analyst firm Forrester Research found “BT Global Services has the greatest market presence and is winning the most new business”.

The report positions BT Global Services as a strong performer amongst 12 European MPLS-based (multi protocol label switching) Wide Area Network (WAN) service providers.

The report went on to say that “(BT Global Services) sales are growing strongly” and “it consistently wins large contracts from major MNCs [multinational corporations].”

Alex Pannell, General Manager, Data & IP VPN Portfolio, BT Global Services, said: “Forrester’s excellent feedback reflects our position within Europe. Since 2005, we have invested heavily in our global network to help meet the networked IT services requirements of multi-site organisations worldwide. Our continued contract wins validate this investment and demonstrate customer confidence in BT’s ability to deliver.”

Forrester conducted customer reference evaluations of 12 providers that offer MPLS-based WAN services in Europe. The report says “European use of MPLS-based IP VPNs (virtual private networks) for corporate networks has reached maturity, with many enterprises now carrying IP voice and video across their networks […] Adoption of carrier Ethernet services is growing and catching up with adoption of MPLS-based IP VPNs – a quarter of firms currently use carrier Ethernet, and many more plan to bring it on board.”

BT’s MPLS network spanned 170 countries by the end of March 2008. Every week an average of one new city is added, and every month over 3,000 new customer sites are connected. BT Global Services will continue to expand this network in the coming years.