Nortel Rings In Unified Communication Services At Aged-Care Homes For Acsess Health

Residents To Get Voice, Video Contact With Relatives And Friends
SYDNEY, Australia – Acsess Health, a leading provider of in-room and house call solutions for aged-care and retirement homes in Australia, is breathing new life into the communication services available to residents while generating new business revenue for facility owners with advanced call technology from Nortel* [NYSE/TSX: NT].

Acsess supplies call solutions to more than 80 aged-care and retirement facilities in Australia through its unique Medi-call System, a custom-designed wall mounted dialer that gives residents easy access to 24-hour emergency call services.

Through its ongoing collaboration with Nortel, Acsess will be able to offer residents more personal communication with friends and relatives by way of voice as well as face-to-face video calls, keeping them in touch with more people than they would otherwise have been able to contact. The technology will allow facility owners to generate new revenue by offering these services as value-add options to residents. The additional revenue can then be reinvested in the facilities for upkeep and maintenance, and for keeping down resident costs.

Acsess is already working on upgrading 19 facilities with the new technology, with at least 120 more facilities lined up over the next four years.

“A few years ago Nortel was the only supplier that took the time to help us build an integrated call system for aged-care and retirement homes, and now we have the technology foundation that can easily be upgraded to deliver the next-generation of unified communications services that bring residents even closer to friends and loved ones,” says John O’Callaghan, managing director, Acsess Health. “Until now the Medi-call System has been using the traditional copper wire phone network to link with the Nortel CS platform because we’ve found that to be an effective and reliable option for 24-hour emergency care. However, now we are the largest fibre-optic to the home and node supplier in retirement and aged care in Australia. This means we can roll out next-generation technology like IP telephony and unified communications from the same system with the same high level of reliability.”

“Nortel’s IP technology gives us a strong competitive advantage, in both cost and functionality, in a very competitive market,” says O’Callaghan. “Whereas other providers expect to collect a percentage of the revenue stream generated by the call services we provide, the approach we’ve taken with Nortel allows our customers to use all the revenue generated by these services to maintain their own facilities and keep the cost to residents much lower than they would otherwise be.”

“Our customers are looking for ways to generate new business in competitive markets and to win mind share with their own customers with products that are easier to use, easier to operate, and cost less to run,” says Mark Stevens, president, Australia and New Zealand, Nortel.

“The Acsess Medi-call integration is a great example of Nortel’s unique ability to customise its technology to meet specific customer requirements - in this case combining the functionality of a fully-fledged IP PBX with an emergency call system,” says Stevens. “The technology is also highly scalable and opens the door for companies that want to create new revenue streams for their customers using their existing solutions.”

Nortel’s solution for Acsess is based on its flagship Communication Server (CS) 1000, a highly scalable, modular unified communications platform that supports analogue, IP telephony services.

Nortel has recently deployed the CS 1000 at a number of higher education campuses, including RMIT University in Victoria, to support future unified communications deployments.
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*Nortel, the Nortel logo and the Globemark are trademarks of Nortel Networks.