Nortel strikes Olympic gold

Vendor Nortel is throwing its weight behind the London Olympics by providing its networking products and becoming one of the event's Tier One sponsors.

The vendor has been unveiled as the 2012 Olympics and Paralympics Official Network Infrastructure Partner and also as the games' seventh Tier One sponsorship backer. The company will provide BT with equipment for WANs, wireless LANs, call centres and fixed telephony and will also contribute to the £2bn of private funding organisers are hoping to raise.

Nortel chief executive Mike Zafirovski said: “The network infrastructure is fundamental to the Games and critical to the delivery of its communications services. Fresh from the Vancouver 2010 Winter Games, our team will be experienced in providing the level of passion, support and expertise required to help deliver the Olympic and Paralympic Games in London in 2012.”

London 2012 chair Sebastian Coe said: "We are counting on Nortel with their Olympic Games experience and breadth of expertise for mission-critical projects to ensure successful delivery of our Games requirements. Commercially, we are in great shape, with four years to go we are in the unprecedented position of having raised over half of our domestic sponsorship targets already.”

Patrick O’Connell, president of delivery and service operations at BT Global Services added: "Nortel has supplied network equipment to BT for many years enabling us to deliver communications services to some of our major corporate and government customers in the UK. We welcome them to the London 2012 programme, supporting BT's delivery of the critical communications infrastructure for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games."