How Basking Ridge Helped Bring the Olympics to Your Home

Nearly everyone has experienced issues with network connections, slow Internet, dropped phone calls or poor cell phone coverage, but the challenge facing Basking Ridge's Avaya was to help design a network that would be used by over 5,500 personnel from 80 countries, 25,000 volunteers and 10,000 media representatives – all at the same time, and with zero tolerance for failure.

That is the challenge of working as the Official Converged Network Equipment Supplier for the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Games, a role Avaya started preparing for over four years ago.

Avaya, with its corporate headquarters on Mt. Airy Road, sells communications network hardware and technology business to business. So, while you may not recognize the name from products you can purchase at Best Buy, Avaya may play a role in providing the phone systems you use in your office, or other similar products. Avaya became involved with the Olympic games through their recent purchase of the telecommunications provider Nortel, which was the supplier for Bell Canada – the first all-IP provider at the Olympic games.

All-IP means that everything at the games runs on one unified network. Phone calls, Internet access, HD video streaming, journalists' photo uploads and even the scores judges send in during the events are all converged on the same network. When you watch the games at home, the TV signal was first sent through the network operated by Bell Canada, which is using hardware built by Avaya.

"It's a challenge because you are deploying all of this very sophisticated networking equipment in some of the most rugged terrain around," Jay Barta, media relations professional at Avaya, said.

"It's one thing for 500 people to get online and try to get Internet access, but when you start piping in multiple HD TV feeds [it's a different matter]," Barta said. "The first system you could think of as a garden hose, but when you start adding HD TV and all the data and scoring systems, instead of a garden hose you need something you could drive a Mack truck through."

After carefully constructing the hardware that could be used to handle the capacity of an international event, Avaya spent the last year and half in testing with the Vancouver Organizing Committee (VANOC) to make sure that the network would run without a hitch.

"[VANOC] has some of the most stressful testing requirements of anyone we've ever worked with," Barta said. "You are testing all sorts of conceivable situations from a cable getting cut to more significant natural occurances, [such as] bad weather and all sorts of things."

Many of the executives based in Basking Ridge, such as Senior Vice President Todd Abbott and CEO Kevin Kennedy have spent time at the games with customers, and they hope the international attention will benefit the Avaya brand name.

"In many ways, the converged network solution we are providing to VANOC and Bell is similar in performance, reliability, security and scope to running the communications infrastructure of a small country," Kennedy said in a press release. "Avaya is proud to share in the spirit of the 2010 Winter Games - the international cooperation, sporting competition, and goodwill among nations - and to have this unique opportunity to showcase our solutions on such a global stage."