Nortel upgrades networks at four airports

Nortel Networks (India) is upgrading the communications at four Indian international airports, which should help make the staff more responsive to travellers.

The advanced communications systems would simplify the way airport staff communicate across the expansive airport area and also help to cut operation costs. While Nortel will not disclose the value of the work involved, sources estimate the contracts would be worth millions of dollars.

Work is underway at Mumbai's Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport and will be completed by the end of the year. While work has been completed at Delhi airport, it is in progress at Hyderabad and Bangalore airports too, sources said. Over the past year, Nortel has undertaken a multi-million dollar Indian Railways contract for wireless communications across 750 kms of rail lines, running through 90 stations, in Uttar Pradesh.

Nortel is setting up an internet protocol (IP) communications network at Mumbai airport where, Mumbai International Airport (MIAL) Limited, which manages the facilities, has planned to consolidate the data, telephony and video systems. This will be put together in a wired and wireless IP-based network powered by Nortel and its Metro Ethernet-based Provider Backbone Bridging (PBB) and Provider Backbone Transport (PBT) technologies.

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), a long-term partner of MIAL, will provide systems integration for the converged triple-play communications upgrade project.

"The Indian aviation industry is poised for huge growth and airport infrastructure must be scalable, resilient and future proof to support this dramatic growth," said Dhananjay Ganjoo, vice-president (enterprise solutions), Nortel

India. Airport operations staff and customer service personnel will be benefited by unified communications capabilities such as instant messaging (IM), collaboration, conferencing and messaging, Ganjoo explained.

For instance, if the security unit is looking out for a person who may be a security threat, the Nortel system will enable a picture of the person to be flashed on all IP phones installed at the airport, thus alerting all related agencies.

In case of parking, which has become another problem at airports nowadays, an individual will be able to call a speech-enabled server to reserve parking space without the assistance of an attendant.

Similarly, a new emergency notification system will enhance public safety.

"Given that police and ambulances use radio frequency (RF) technology, it involved integrating the RF frequencies on the IP backbone with our LAN to mobile radio technology," Ganjoo said.

The MIAL proposition "comes at a substantially lower price point, plus it includes more services", Ganjoo said.