Telefonica’s Anywhere, Anytime Mobile Attendant Service Powered By Nortel

MADRID, Spain - Telefónica SA, a world leading telecommunications operator, is delivering anywhere, anytime communications in Spain with its Mobile Attendant service. The new service, powered by a Nortel* [NYSE/TSX:NT] IMS-ready solution and providing personalised, reliable and easy-to-use communications for businesses, was introduced by Telefónica at the recent 3GSM World Congress 2007 in Barcelona, Spain.
Telefónica’s Mobile Attendant delivers a consistent communications experience between its wireless and wireline networks wherever needed. For example, film crews on location or construction crews in a remote region can receive advanced and personalized communications in a specific location at any time.

Mobile Attendant is one of Telefónica’s first steps towards a Fixed Mobile Converged Multimedia Network, offering a more effective communication experience to users across multiple access networks.

“This service is ’Anytime, Anywhere’ communication at its best, with voice, video, text and data integrated into one seamless communications environment,” said Fernando Valdivielso, vice president Telefónica Global Account, Nortel. “Nortel shares Telefónica’s vision of enhancing people’s lives with innovative technologies that link fixed and mobile networks together to deliver a converged communications experience.”

The Mobile Attendant service gives communications flexibility to mobile phone users through the use of Nortel’s PC Communicator software, which manages calls running on regular GSM or 3G phones. Via a simple graphical interface, the service manages simultaneous calls, call transfers, and multi-party conferencing. It can also simultaneously run multimedia sessions from the user’s computer including a presence messaging update feature that shows available, busy, or out-of-coverage-area for any of their colleague’s GSM or 3G phones.

Telefónica’s future plans include adding a Personal Assistant to the Mobile Attendant service with automatic routing capabilities and easy-to-manage call queues. This will allow field-based personnel, workers in temporary offices and highly mobile personnel, such as sales people, to enhance their productivity while using a GSM or 3G phone.

The Telefónica Mobile Attendant service is built around Nortel’s Application Server 5200 which seamlessly integrates voice with video, collaboration, presence and reachability services. The new Mobile Attendant service is the second that Telefónica has launched on this platform. The first service was Unified Access, a fixed-mobile VoIP service that has proven its robustness during live operation.

The Mobile Attendant service is part of Telefónica´s IMS strategy. As the popularity of Telefónica’s new services grows, the intent is to allow interoperability with Telefónica’s IMS core and seamless compatibility with existing services, such as presence, instant messaging, and video.
As well as the Application Server 5200, Nortel is also providing its Next Generation Networks and IMS Media Gateway Controller (MGC2000) and the Media Gateway 15000 for connection to the Public Switched Telephone Network.

Nortel’s IMS solution is access-aware and supports 3GPP (IMS), 3GPP2 (MMD), Packet Cable 2.0 and TISPAN standards. Nortel is currently engaged with leading operators in wireline, cable, CDMA and GSM/UMTS markets.