Avaya, the official convergence communication provider for the FIFA 2002 and 2006 World Cup events, is considering the renewal of its contract with the soccer body, which expires at the end of this year.
This is according to Doug Gardner, MD of the Avaya World Cup Programme. Gardner is visiting SA to hold talks with the SA Football Association and FIFA regarding Avaya`s potential involvement in the FIFA 2010 World Cup. He said Avaya would only be in a position to make its decision once a business case was completed.
"We will make the decision at a later stage this year," he said at the company`s World Cup feedback session yesterday.
Should Avaya decide to renew its contract, he added, it would set up FIFA project offices in SA and would look for local partners.
"We would only need to bring in a few people as we are confident in SA`s competence to partner with Avaya and provide world-class communications network infrastructure," he said.
The Avaya World Cup Programme has invested more than $100 million in communications networking infrastructure since its initial involvement.
At the last two events, Avaya provided converged voice and data communications network infrastructure. The network handled more that 21 trillion bytes of voice and data traffic. These included players` and journalists` accreditation, photo transmissions and match details, which were sent around the world in real-time.
Gardner said the training provided by Avaya would see a skills transfer that would benefit SA, while the network infrastructure would be donated to hospitals or universities.
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