(14 July 2006 6:00 pm)

MUMBAI: Avaya was the official convergence Communication provider for the recently concluded 2006 Fifa World Cup. For 32 days, the network handled a huge amount of voice and data traffic -- including players' and journalists' accreditations, photo transmissions and match details sent around the world in real time.

The network had become operational on 15 May and carried over 21 trillion bytes of data and achieved 99.999 per cent availability without a single major outage and free of errors.

Avaya states that a total of 21,126 terabytes of voice and data traffic was transferred over the network between 15 May and 10 July. During that time, people have logged on to the converged communications network approximately 642,538 times and made 364,395 phone calls on the network, which represents 789,810 minutes of calling time.

On the day of the Final between France and Italy, 111,150 megabytes of data traffic traveled over the network, 55,037 people logged on to the converged network, and 3,456 phone calls were made, representing 6,217 minutes of calling time.

The converged network, which combined voice and data on the same infrastructure, connected the 12 host stadiums, the stadium media centers, and the Fifa headquarters in Berlin. Players, coaches, volunteers and fans alike benefited from the network that was used to issue accreditations for players and journalists, report results, track materials and inventory, confirm accommodations at Fifa's official hotels and maintain security systems.

Avaya FIFA World Cup programme director Andrea Rinnerberger says, "For a highly visible event such as the Fifa World Cup, it was absolutely critical for the network to work without any downtime director of the. In a very real way, the network's excellent performance contributed to the event's smooth operations.

"Journalists and photographers who needed to file quickly connected to the internet directly from the field and sent photos and stories via an Avaya wireless LAN network. 32 teams, and tens of thousands of Fifa executives and employees, officials and visiting dignitaries all depended on the transportation and protocol application to get to hotels, cars, trains and airports."