Nortel Dials Incumbent Out Of Major Hotel Development Group in Australia

Nortel Dials Incumbent Out Of Major Hotel Development Group in Australia

Nortel Solution To Save A$300,000 Over Five Years, Pave Way for New Services

MELBOURNE, Australia – Nortel* [NYSE/TSX: NT] has been selected to supply Asian Pacific Building Corporation** (APBC) with unified communications, IP telephony and wireless capabilities that is expected to  save the company more than A$300,000 over five years compared to its incumbent system.

Nortel IP phones will replace existing handsets in the Rydges-managed Bell City Hotel and Residences in Melbourne, and a Nortel wireless network will provide mobile phone services in boardrooms and public areas with purpose-built wireless handsets.

The four-and-a-half star development, part of the Bell City** complex developed by APBC, opened its doors on August 1 this year.

“We’ve been using IP telephony since we launched the first phase of the hotel and residences in 2001,” says Will Deague, director, APBC. “At the time, the technology saved us the cost of running phone cables to 444 rooms, and since we intended to offer high-speed data services to our customers anyway, offering voice calls over the same network was a logical choice. It also meant being able to give our guests instant access to personalised voice and video-on-demand services from an integrated system, and to manage the system remotely from a maintenance and billings perspective, which is a distinct advantage of IP telephony over analogue services.”

“In planning the second stage of the hotel, as part of the greater Bell City expansion, we again looked at the market to see what competitive solutions were out there and discovered that switching to a Nortel solution would save us 25 per cent – or more than A$ 300,000 – over the five years of a deployment contract,” says Jason Norman, technical services manager, Asian Pacific Telecommunications** – the IT and communications services arm of APBC responsible for technology implementations for the group.

“The upfront capital cost from other vendors was similar, but Nortel’s solution meant that we would save on annual maintenance fees, and using Nortel’s Hospitality Messaging System (HMS), also be able to offer our customers an unprecedented level of service availability, which translates into increased usage and revenue for the group, and a better overall experience for our guests,” adds Norman. “Combined with the simpler management of the Nortel system, the seamless integration of wireless IP telephony and data services, and the easy scalability of the system to include new unified communications solutions in the hotel as well as other properties currently under development, the switch to Nortel made perfect sense in both business and technology benefits.”

“Despite the clear advantages of IP telephony – and more recently unified communications technology – in the hospitality industry, the local industry has been slow to adopt the technology en masse,” says Mark Fioretto, general manager, Enterprise Solutions, Australia and New Zealand, Nortel. “The main reason we’re given is perceived cost. There’s still a general perception in the industry that fully functional unified communications solutions are too costly to implement. Developments like Bell City are slowly changing that mindset, demonstrating how the competitive advantages of unified communications services like click-to-call video conferencing are not only good for guests, but also for the business.”

Nortel’s solution for APBC includes a range of IP handsets, including the Nortel 2001, 2002 and 2007-series phones. It also includes Nortel’s HMS 400, an easy-to-use messaging solution for both guest and staff communications. The wireless network is based on the Nortel WLAN 2300 series switches.

Combined with Nortel’s unified communications expertise, the solution provides flexibility in how to best to reach the right person at the right time, including IM, click-to-call and flexible communication options. It includes ‘presence’ capabilities, which enables a person to know if the recipient is available and by what means they prefer to be contacted. This removes latency from the communications process, increasing the speed of business and service delivery.

Nortel’s unified communications solutions have been widely adopted by a number of Australian companies in 2008, most recently Acsess Health and Wannon Water in Victoria.

About Nortel

Nortel is a recognized leader in delivering communications capabilities that make the promise of Business Made Simple a reality for our customers. Our next-generation technologies, for both service provider and enterprise networks, support multimedia and business-critical applications. Nortel’s technologies are designed to help eliminate today's barriers to efficiency, speed and performance by simplifying networks and connecting people to the information they need, when they need it. Nortel does business in more than 150 countries around the world. For more information, visit Nortel on the Web at www.nortel.com. For the latest Nortel news, visit www.nortel.com/news.

Certain statements in this press release may contain words such as “could”, “expects”, “may”, “anticipates”, “believes”, “intends”, “estimates”, ”targets”, “envisions”, “seeks” and other similar language and are considered forward-looking statements or information under applicable securities legislation. These statements are based on Nortel’s current expectations, estimates, forecasts and projections about the operating environment, economies and markets in which Nortel operates. These statements are subject to important assumptions, risks and uncertainties, which are difficult to predict and the actual outcome may be materially different from those contemplated in forward-looking statements. For additional information with respect to certain of these and other factors, see Nortel’s Annual Report on Form10-K, Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q and other securities filings with the SEC. Unless otherwise required by applicable securities laws, Nortel disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

-end-

*Nortel, the Nortel logo and the Globemark are trademarks of Nortel Networks.

**This is a 3rd party link as described in our Web linking practices.