Nortel to supply gear for 2012 Olympics

Organizers of the 2012 Olympic Games in London announced Wednesday that Nortel Networks will supply network infrastructure for the events.

Joel Hackney, president of enterprise solutions at Nortel, cited Nortel's commitment to building more energy efficient switching and routing products than other vendors as one reason for its selection by the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games.

Nortel products "deliver 40 percent lower energy consumption," Hackney said in an interview today, noting third party studies released at Interop in May that compared the company's products to competitors.

The Olympic committee also cited Nortel's product reliability and security along with the networking firm's effort to ability to partner with other companies in awarding the contract, Hackney said. Nortel's LAN, WAN, call center and telephony equipment will be installed at Olympic facilities by BT Group, the Olympic committee's communications services partner.

Both Internet Protocol and Ethernet technologies will be deployed to deliver information real time to an estimated audience of 4 billion people around the world, he said. Nortel was also selected to provide networking infrastructure products for the 2010 Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver.

Some of the Nortel hardware used at the games will later be contributed to the London 2012 Education Program that targets students throughout the UK, Hackney said.