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Charter Telecom Receives the 2007 Nortel Innovation Award For Vancouver Island Conference Centre’s Unified Network Design.
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When the Vancouver Island Conference Centre went looking for leading-edge technology that would meet the needs of conference planners and delegates – both today and tomorrow – Charter’s broad skill set and intimate knowledge of Nortel technology made for an award-winning partnership.
Charter won the award, which was in the Premium Partner Category, for the innovative unified network design it created for the new Vancouver Island Conference Centre located in Nanaimo, BC. The award was presented at Nortel’s recent Executive Partner Forum in front of 350 of the company’s peers from North and South America.
“The city was looking for leading edge technology that would meet the varying needs of conference delegates today and tomorrow,” commented Per Kristensen, Chief Technology Officer for the City of Nanaimo. “Reliability and security were key requirements and the Nortel solution was able to deliver all of this.”
The award-winning network solution caters to all the potential voice and data requirements a full-service, state-of-the-art conference centre needs to deliver to their clients.
“We designed a unified network that is fully redundant, highly secure, and comprises both wired and wireless voice and data components,” said Charter Telecom President Paul Chandler.
Early on in the VICC project, the Nanaimo team established a Technical Steering Committee consisting of community representatives whose purpose was to advise on audio-visual and telecom services and features. For the telecommunication services, the Committee issued an extensive Request For Proposal (RFP) and invited responses from the industry. The principal objectives they laid out for those competing were to provide the best in client services, ease of support, and to be resilient and reliable.
“Designing a feature-rich network to suit the ever-changing needs of a conference centre is a challenge,” said Paul Chandler. “Add in the need for security, resiliency and a multiplicity of technologies, and you have the requirements of the Vancouver Island Conference Centre network. These types of opportunities allow us to apply our broad set of skills and intimate knowledge of Nortel’s suite of products to surpass our clients’ needs and expectations," he added.
According to Per Kristensen, the City received six responses that met the minimum requirements of the RFP, all of which were thoroughly evaluated and ranked. Charter Telecom won the bid, with a proposal that provided the best overall value to the VICC through several advantages: The Charter Telecom proposal was the only solution using Nortel equipment; it also had the most resilient design. The solution promised the most redundant and reliable network, minimizing the potential downtime for the VICC and its clients. Charter was also very responsive to the VICC needs, and willing to adjust its proposal and services to meet the unique needs of the conference centre.
“Charter provided an innovative design to the city that clearly showed they understood our demands and needs and met all the criteria we set out,” added Kristensen. “They have been an excellent partner to work with, providing outstanding service, and have been very flexible in dealing with the minor changes and issues that have arisen during the installation.”
“Overall, we are very satisfied with the work that Charter has completed for the VICC, and we look forward to working with them on future projects.”
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