BT Wholesale's chief technical officer, Matt Beal, that traffic shaping wouldn't be an issue with BT's next-generation network, 21st Century Network (21CN), as there will be enough bandwidth, even with the ever increasing demand from both the number of customers and the high bandwidth services such as internet TV (IPTV).

Traffic shaping is often a contentious problem, while some may see it as delivering performance for time critical services such as VoIP, others see it as a way that operators can promote services by giving them greater priority.
"It is up to us at the core of the network to make sure there is enough bandwidth for [our services and those of our competitors]," he claimed.

He did admit that there wouldn't be the great speed increase for customers with 21CN that some are hoping for, he thought that the 24Mbps top speed would not be achieved "unless you are… in the exchange" and realistically these would be in the 8-12Mbps region.

Although 21CN maybe good news for BT, us poor users who live outside cable areas and not next door to an exchange will have to wait for further technologies, such as Fibre To The Cabinet (FTTC) to gain any advantages.