Alcatel-Lucent has announced that The All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club (AELTC), home of the famous Wimbledon tennis championship, has installed a new communications platform to offer an improved service for media, spectators and staff.
Alcatel-Lucent business partner Actimax will be carrying out a phased deployment, which will be managed by telecoms and IT consultancy MAC Systems.
John Massey, managing director at Actimax, said: “AELTC is utilising technology to transform its facilities and enhance the experience of all visitors to the venue. This is an ambitious project and given the range of solutions being installed, a phased rollout is the best way of meeting AELTC’s unique requirements and minimising internal disruption.”
On top of an improved service, AELTC also hopes to improve billing accuracy and consistency and increase revenue streams.
The annual Wimbledon championships attract around 450,000 visitors and over 600 journalists. Alcatel-Lucent says the new network should enable the media to create customised user profiles and provide access to Internet and phone services with handsets that deliver voice and graphical support in multiple languages.
Remote access and audio conferencing capabilities have also been added. AELTC’s Ticket Office is now using Alcatel-Lucent’s contact centre technology to improve operations there.
AELTC’s old system was provided by a variety of outsourced providers, which proved time-consuming and costly. The organisation also felt that it had little control over service quality or pricing.
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AELTC is also considering future improvements to its communications platform, including the use of XML applications to feed real-time information – such as tennis scores and court changes – to telephone handsets.
Jeff Lucas, head of IT at AELTC, said: “Millions of people worldwide rely on the media to follow The Championships, so it is imperative that we can provide them with fast, flexible 21st century services.”
