British Telecommunications PLC (BT) has announced further investment in Asia Pacific to the tune of US$48 million that will focus on the transfer of services to an integrated platform for voice, video and data.

The upgrade has begun and completion is expected later this year.

In 2003, BT began rebuilding its Asia Pacific network integrating domestic and international voice capacity across nine countries in the region.

BT"s Asia Pacific president, Allen Ma said the upgrade aims to provide a single interface to customers, with high quality voice capabilities over the dedicated IP infrastructure.

"In this way, BT is converging the user environment to support diverging user groups," Ma said. "This convergence both improves our cost model and enhances our domestic capabilities."

BT is also increasing its direct coverage to 13 countries and 30 cities with its own infrastructure across the region, with reach also increased to over 50 cities.

The core sub-sea backbone operated by BT is also being upgraded from 300M bps to 1.5G bps to cope with 400 percent traffic growth over the past two years to and from Europe and the US.

The implementation of a new voice platform which will support the convergence for the carrier and enterprise markets will begin in June 2005.

The installation is progressing for Bangalore, Delhi, Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur, Manila, Mumbai, Seoul, Singapore, Sydney, Taipei and Tokyo.