BT has named the final group of equipment suppliers for its IP-only 21st Century Network (21CN) infrastructure.

Alcatel, Cisco, Ericsson and Fujitsu will all be supplying hardware, joining Ciena, Huawei, Lucent and Siemens which were signed up before Christmas.

BT Wholesale chief executive Paul Reynolds said that the telco is "moving forward strongly" with the project, and that its first customers in the UK will be offered services over 21CN within 12 months.

Alcatel and Cisco have been selected to supply metro nodes providing routing and signalling for voice, data and video services, and Cisco is also supplying large-scale routers.

Ericsson will handle the i-node domain service control software, while Fujitsu will be providing access technology to link BT's existing network with the 21CN.

"This concludes what has been one of the largest single procurement programmes ever undertaken in the communications industry worldwide," said Meryl Bushell, chief procurement officer for BT Group.