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AT&T Deploys Banking Video Conferencing NetworkTMCnet VoIP Minute Watch Columnist
AT&T Inc. announced on Friday that the International Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) tapped the telecom giant to launch one of the first large-scale videoconferencing systems in Taiwan's banking sector.
ICBC chose AT&T Inc. to design and implement the videoconferencing network, which links more than 75 branches within Taiwan, and will eventually include additional sites in Japan, Europe and the United States. Terms of the contract were not disclosed at press time. "With increasing competition in the banking sector we are constantly looking for new ways to strengthen our service to customers, as well as improve our own efficiency and cost-effectiveness," said Chiu Wei Liu, assistant vice president of head office-secretarial department at ICBC. "We are delighted with the turnkey solution provided by AT&T and our customers are already enjoying the benefits of our improved communications infrastructure."
ICBC expects to cut down on traveling to meetings by holding regular "virtual" branch meetings and briefings from headquarters. The first phase of the system was an advanced Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) network to connect ICBC's branch offices throughout Taiwan. The videoconference network integration followed next, with AT&T taking responsibility for all aspects of the implementation, including working with videoconferencing equipment vendors and local network carriers.
"This was one of our most challenging and exciting projects in the region to date," he said. "The banking sector is among the most demanding in terms of stringent security, reliability and quality requirements, so we are delighted that ICBC chose to entrust this landmark solution to AT&T," said Steve Lowe, vice president of AT&T Asia Pacific.
AT&T made news on Wednesday when it announced it inked a three-year contract for networking security services from Lorillard Tobacco Co., one of the oldest and largest tobacco companies in the United States. The deal called for AT&T to provide a network-based e-mail security and message management system that will enable Lorillard to ensure the integrity of electronic messaging before it enters the corporate network.
The AT&T will also shield Lorillard users from spam and viruses; manage their content; enforce their e-mail policy; archive their messages; and provide disaster recovery for both inbound and outbound messages. All the services will be delivered through a global network of data centers for redundancy and load balancing to maximize bandwidth and ensure always-available electronic messaging, storage and monitoring capabilities.
AT&T Inc.
International Commercial Bank of China
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Johanne Torres is contributing editor for TMCnet and Internet Telephony magazine. To see more articles by Johanne Torres, please visit Johanne Torres' columnist page.
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