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Arizona State University (ASU) reportedly has expanded its relationship with Qwest Communications with a five-year, $54 million communications agreement, that will save the university $1.48 million a year.

 

As part of the new contract, Qwest (News - Alert) will manage all of ASU’s voice, data and wireless services to provide students, faculty and staff easy and efficient Internet access, voice communications and computing capabilities across the university’s four campuses. 

Qwest officials said that as strategic networking provider, the company would equip the ASU community with enhanced and reliable connectivity over a converged voice and data network that provides the foundation for a unified communications platform.

 

Officials said that Qwest services will provide ASU with a centrally managed, hosted, scalable, flexible and distributed architecture for voice over Internet protocol and unified communications.

 

Qwest Managed IP Communications capabilities would be used by ASU’s 76,000-user population to meet the increasing demands for bandwidth, new and emerging technologies, reduced costs, increased efficiencies and the feature functionalities unified communications provides.

 

“The capability, versatility and value of our overall network will jump very quickly because there’s little additional physical infrastructure we will have to manage,” said Adrian Sannier, university technology officer for ASU, in a statement.

 

Sannier said that he is optimistic this innovative, fully managed approach will allow ASU to deliver better voice and data to and from the classrooms, laboratories and dormitories.

 

 “Qwest sees the need nationwide for higher education entities like ASU to transform dated technologies into fully finished communications solutions that meet the ever-increasing demands to integrate technology and education,” said Sharon Montgomery, vice president, Qwest government and education solutions, in a statement.

 

Montgomery said that ASU’s commitment and visionary process to incorporate the latest and greatest technology Qwest has to offer is truly commendable.

 

Back in May TMCnet reported that Accanto Systems’ Traffic Analysis and Monitoring System have been selected by Denver -based Qwest Communications to provide call monitoring and troubleshooting for its state-of-the-art internal call center.

 

Accanto officials said the company’s TAMS system was chosen due to its ability to correlate SS7, TDM and VoIP data relating to a single call, and allowing detailed drill-down capability to ease troubleshooting operations.