Nortel Boosts the University of the East’s Connectivity and Productivity

Ethernet Routing Technology Enables New Applications and Collaboration for the Faculty and Students at Philippine University

MANILA - The University of the East (UE) in the Philippines has selected Nortel* [TSX: NT | OTC: NRTLQ] in upgrading its information technology infrastructure and to boost the performance of all its computerized and web applications systems. The upgrades will assist UE in enhancing its reputation as a high-tech university with fast growing student and staff demands for better and faster connectivity and next generation applications.

With this expansion project, UE students, faculty and personnel from all three campuses - Recto, Caloocan and UERM in Quezon City - are now connected via a single network using Nortel’s 10Gbps bandwidth and Passport 8600 Ethernet routing solutions. With this system, UE students, faculty and personnel can access UE’s centralized database enabling quicker, easier, and more efficient academic, financial and administrative transactions.

Casimiro Obillo, Jr., UE’s senior assistant director, Management Information Systems Department, (UE-MISD) states, “We believe that UE’s IT infrastructure should be able to support all UE users’ demands at an optimum level. Nortel’s new system will allow us to cater to the growing academic and technological needs of UE students and faculty by providing them with a medium they can use to instantly access the most up-to-date and content-rich multimedia resources. These upgrades enable UE and its students -to keep up with technological innovation that provides UE students a competitive edge as they enter the real world.”

With the technology upgrade in place, UE students and faculty can check their online portals, and upload and download various academic documents including student records, class schedules, grades and assignments quickly and with ease. The upgrade can also support online classes and forums and collaboration with various sites and students around the world. This will further complement UE’s classroom environment and help provide a richer learning experience to UE students.

In addition, UE’s 22 libraries are now connected to UE’s central database and can now provide an updated pool of journals, books, and other learning materials. UE employees can also look forward to a more efficient facilitation of payroll and other employee benefits.

“We expect Nortel’s innovative technologies to reduce downtimes and service outages, especially during UE’s enrollment periods. The establishment of a redundancy link by Nortel allows the upgraded system to continuously operate even with the main line disconnected,” said Mark Fioretto, vice president for Nortel Enterprise, South Asia. “UE use of the best and latest IT technologies and solutions ensure UE faculty and students’ access to an unlimited wealth of knowledge and resources to advance teaching and learning. UE is embracing technology and using it to make UE students competitive in the dynamic and ever-changing IT industry.”

UE is deploying the Nortel Ethernet Routing Switch 8600, a chassis-based Ethernet switch supporting up to 384 Gigabit Ethernet ports and 96 10 Gigabit Ethernet ports, as well as WAN connectivity via ATM, Point of Sale (PoS), and Wave Division Multiplexing technologies. This system is scalable to meet growing capacity needs, and provides UE with a solid foundation for future network growth.

In 2006, UE also selected Nortel for its Caloocan campus network connectivity project through its nPower channel partner Trends and Technologies, Inc.

About Nortel

Nortel is a recognized leader in delivering communications capabilities that make the promise of Business Made Simple a reality for our customers. Our next-generation technologies, for both service provider and enterprise networks, support multimedia and business-critical applications. Nortel’s technologies are designed to help eliminate today’s barriers to efficiency, speed and performance by simplifying networks and connecting people to the information they need, when they need it. Nortel does business in more than 150 countries around the world. For more information, visit Nortel on the Web at www.nortel.com . For the latest Nortel news, visit www.nortel.com/news .

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