In touch with the world from the G8 Summit: Federal Press Office selects VoIP solution from Alcatel-Lucent for G8 Media Center

Communication is playing a major role at the G8 Summit being held from 6 to 8 June in Germany. In the run-up to the summit, the media and public alike are keenly following which topics the attending political leaders have on their agenda. Alcatel-Lucent (Euronext Paris and NYSE: ALU) is on site to support smooth communication. In the framework of a sponsorship, the equipment maker and its strategic sales partner NextiraOne Germany are providing the telephone infrastructure for the Media and Briefing Centers in Heiligendamm and Kühlungsborn of the Federal German Government’s Press and Information Office (BPA).

Alcatel-Lucent is equipping the Media and Briefing Centers of the summit with a voice-over-IP (VoIP) telephone system from the OmniPCX Enterprise series. Moreover, Alcatel-Lucent and NextiraOne are handling the installation, configuration and connection to the existing Alcatel-Lucent’s traditional telephone system that is located in the Federal Press Office in Berlin. In this way, the Federal Press Office can reach its journalists’ contacts from both locations at all times, and react flexibly to all events.

The solution installed for the summit allows classic telephony and VoIP to be combined in a hybrid system environment. As a result, the Media and Briefing Centers of the G8 summit and the Federal Press Office in Berlin can use the same voice functions, independent of the communication protocol in use locally. The voice functions available include internal conference service, call forwarding and broker’s call, plus voice mail and address book functions. Users are oblivious of the technological differences between the two telephone systems, and do not need to learn new functions or a new way to operate the phone.

“With this showcase we want to prove in public that our solutions satisfy the most stringent requirements”, underlines Alf Henryk Wulf, Member of the Board of Alcatel-Lucent Germany. “Together with our partner NextiraOne we are integrating traditional telephony with advanced VoIP technology. Since we are talking about off-the-shelf products, this hybrid solution also demonstrates a migration path for other companies and government authorities that want to, and have to, convert their networks to meet the latest requirements”, added Wulf.

The voice solution Alcatel-Lucent is providing for the G8 Summit comprises some 60 IP Touch 4068 VoIP telephones plus additional hardware and software from the OmniPCX Enterprise product family, among other things. Additional ISDN lines are available as backup.

Beside the Federal Press Office, the Federal Chancellery in Berlin also uses telephony solutions from Alcatel-Lucent.

You can find further information on the IPTouch 4068 IP telephone at: http://www1.alcatel-lucent.com/enterprise/en/products/phones/ip_phones/8_series/4068/index.html