Avaya provides NBC Olympics with state-of-the-art voice solutions

Avaya, a leading global provider of voice and data networks to businesses, today announced it is providing advanced wired and wireless communications technologies to NBC Olympics, Inc. to support communications needs during NBC`s coverage of the Salt Lake City games next month. Based on Avaya Enterprise Class IP Solutions (ECLIPS), the new technology broadens the capabilities of the Avaya communications network provided as part of an eight-year contract that began with the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, Australia.

Avaya converged enterprise solutions will enable NBC Olympics to extend its voice and data network over a single wide area network (WAN) from the NBC Olympics broadcasting center into five local hotels. Additionally, NBC Olympics` mobile staffers will have "one-number reachability" via instantaneous links between their desktop phones and cell phones.

"We initially selected Avaya because we were confident in their ability to support us anywhere in the world with the latest, most innovative technology throughout the eight years of the contract," said Ken Fuller, Director of Broadcast and Network Operations for NBC Olympics, Inc. "From Sydney to Salt Lake City, Avaya has unquestionably lived up to their commitment - and our expectations -- by incorporating sophisticated technological advancements to the existing systems that provide substantial benefits to our operations."

For the Salt Lake City games, the Avaya communications server used in Sydney has been moved and updated with the latest Avaya ECLIPS software, making it possible for NBC Olympics to use their network of choice for communications -- public-switched network, the Internet, intranets, extranets or Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM).

Newly added for this year`s games are the Avaya R300 Remote Office Communicator and the Avaya EC500 Extension to Cellular. The Avaya R300 Remote Office Communicator is a low-cost, high-performance design that brings centralized Avaya communications server features -- essentially everything available at NBC Olympics` primary location -- over a single WAN facility to smaller, remote locations. The R300 has built-in data networking and routing capabilities and includes firewall, Virtual Private Network (VPN), security features and data concentration.

Avaya EC500 Extension to Cellular is a unique mobility-application residing within Avaya Call Processing Software that extends the incoming calling features of Avaya ECLIPS servers to the public cellular network, enabling employees to be reached easily through a single business telephone number. By bridging (simultaneously ringing) calls placed to a user`s office to his or her mobile phone, Avaya EC500 provides an efficient, low-cost way to reach mobile workers across the stadium or anywhere in the world, without the need for call forwarding. Unanswered calls go quickly to the NBC Olympic staffer`s Intuity Audix voicemail.

"Avaya is committed to helping customers maximize their investments in technology and enabling them to have the benefits of the latest advancements," said Micky Tsui, Avaya vice president, Converged Enterprise Solutions. "We look forward to continuing to expand communications capabilities for NBC Olympics through the next several Olympics games."