Nortel Buzzboard

Next year when the New York Mets start the new baseball season in their brand new world-class stadium — Citi Field — Nortel will be powering their network infrastructure.

That’s probably an understatement of Nortel’s involvement, as Nortel will be lead systems integrator, custom application developer, and sole architect of the network.  Some of those “custom applications” possible in the future for fans in the stadium include player statistics via wireless LAN, IPTV-based replays, and special multimedia-based comms to various areas of Citi Field.

The actual network for the stadium is a complete unified communications solution that includes: VoIP using the CS 1000 IP-PBX, Nortel’s data networking equipment including Ethernet Routing Switches, wireless LAN equipment, Nortel’s contact center solution, and a full range of UC professional services.

[Update: Computerworld has this great article where they interviewed Joe Milone, the Mets’ senior director of IS.  The Nortel solution will tie into Microsoft OCS 2007 for conferencing and instant messaging, with hopes to take advantage of “all kinds of OCS hooks” in the future.  In the article, Milone highlights how important network resiliency is to them, citing Nortel’s call center back-up plan and sub-second fail-over of the data network as two keys to choosing Nortel.  The article also highlights that Nortel’s energy efficiency was a factor that mattered to the Mets owners, who wanted to build an energy-efficient ballpark.]

The network will also extend across the U.S. and Dominican Republic to the Mets’ minor league affiliate locations at Tradition Field (Port St. Lucie, Fla., home of Mets Spring Training and the St. Lucie Mets), and KeySpan Park (Coney Island, N.Y., home of the Brooklyn Cyclones) as well as its new Dominican Baseball Academy (Boca Chica, D.R.).

Nortel is becoming quite the sports fanatic.  Nortel today also announced a deal with the Vancouver Canucks for their area. Nortel solutions also support the Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans, Jobing.com Arena in Phoenix, Bell Centre in Montreal and General Motors Place in Vancouver. And of course Nortel is also a key infrastructure provider for the Vancouver 2010 and London 2012 Olympics.