Nortel Buzzboard

Breaking news this morning that Nortel will supply the network infrastructure for the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games in London.

The London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games Limited (LOCOG) today announced that Nortel is the Official Network Infrastructure Partner and the latest London 2012 Tier One sponsor.

What that means is that Nortel will be responsible for delivering the entire communications infrastructure for the 2012 Olympic Games — from the 10G metro network to the IP phones and everything in between.

Nortel will work closely with BT (who is also a tier one sponsor) in their capacity as the official communications services partner for the London 2012 Games. BT will manage the voice and data networks for the 2012 games and provide all communications services — including those for the workforce, venues, athletes, national Olympic committees and the media. So in essence, Nortel will provide the technology for the communications network, and BT will implement it.

The London 2012 network is a huge undertaking, supporting over 205 international sporting organizations, 20,000 worldwide media, nine million spectators, and over four billion television viewers. The Games will host 26 Olympic sports in 34 venues, as well as 20 Paralympic sports in 21 venues.

Nortel has also signed on as a London 2012 Sustainability Partner to help reduce the environmental impacts of hosting the Games.

Nortel, of course, is already an active participant in the Olympics — already involved in the Vancouver 2010 Winter Games as the Official Converged Network Equipment Supplier.

[Update: read coverage of the news from Nortel’s other blogs, Tony Ryb’s Hyperconnected Enterprise blog and Matt Konwiser on Network World. You can also find more on Nortel’s new London 2012 page.]

Below are a few pics from the signing of the agreement between Nortel and LOCOG that happened a few weeks ago. The pics from left-to-right: 1) Paul Deighton, LOCOG CEO, and Tim Watkins of Nortel signing the Agreement, 2) Paul and Tim just after the signing, 3) the Nortel and LOCOG teams that made the agreement happen.