The Australian Broadcasting Corporation is looking for a new provider to maintain and support its PABX (private automatic branch exchange) systems.
NEC previously held the contract which was worth around $3 million, but since it won the work, the scope of the contract had changed, according to tender documents, leading Aunty to re-evaluate the market.
The three-year contract with the option of one year's extension would have the successful applicant carrying out PABX fault resolution, monitoring, access management, scheduled maintenance, annual audits, account management and enhanced services.
The ABC's voice network has 14 NEC PABXs in capital cities and 52 in regional offices. The contract also includes maintaining the PABX of the Special Broadcasting Service (SBS) in Melbourne. The capital city PABXs are linked via shared fibre which is monitored using Cisco Works or SNMPc. The regional offices have ISDN connections.
Some monitoring of the PABXs is possible via a Phoneware call accounting and directory system located in Ultimo.
Three internal employees within the ABC's Information Technology services division are responsible for the voice network, and the support services sought must work in conjunction with the services the staff carry out.
The ABC would only consider responses from companies with a proven track record of providing PABX maintenance and support services to large national corporate telephone networks, and desired to retain its close relationship with NEC, so that suppliers' relationship with NEC was a consideration.
