UQAM Launches Largest IP-based University Network in Québec

Montreal - January 25, 2005 - The Université du Québec à Montréal (UQÀM) today officially launched its new Converged Network, an Internet Protocol (IP) -based voice, video and data network implemented by Bell Canada and based on technology from Cisco Systems.

UQAM is now the first university in Quebec with a fully integrated telecommunications and telephony network, enabling it to offer integrated communications services to respond to the present and future needs of students, researchers and employees. The integrated voice, video and data network will cover the entire campus, connecting six faculties, L'École des sciences de la gestion (the School of Management sciences), 22 research centres, 33 departments, 44 chairs, six institutes, and all classrooms and administrative departments located in the 17 pavilions on the campus. UQÀM chose Bell to install the Cisco IP Communications system, which enabled this major project to be completed in a very short period of time.

"The implementation of this network places UQÀM in the technological vanguard of Quebec universities in this area," said Roch Denis, Dean of UQÀM in his address. He also pointed out that the converged network is a perfect fit with the upcoming Teluq-UQÀM merger.

"We are proud to have been able to contribute to the success of UQÀM, a leader in Québec's technology sector," said Isabelle Courville, President of Bell Canada's Enterprise group. "This project is a perfect example of our market strategy for our enterprise customers. Over the past year, we integrated UQÀM's voice and data networks into a single IP infrastructure, thereby enabling UQÀM to enjoy enhanced productivity while offering superior service. In addition, the institution, its students, its professors and its employees, will now have new applications and new services such as IP telephony at their disposal."

"We're very proud to participate in the design and rollout of this major UQÀM project, which aims to give this institution of higher learning cutting-edge technologies that will improve its management and support teaching and research," said Cisco Systems' Regional Vice-President, Enterprise, Eastern Canada, Michel Houde. "Our solutions integrate UQÀM's networks into a single, more powerful IP network. By choosing technology as a way of improving its performance, UQÀM now has one of the largest IP communications networks in Canada."

The Largest University IP Network in Québec

Combining speed, robustness and cost savings, the integrated IP network replaces both the traditional telephone system and the telecommunications network that UQAM had been using. It replaced UQÀM's nearly 20-year old private branch exchange (PBX) and upgrades the data network, which will meet present and future needs in teaching and research.

All workstations connected to the network will now have access at 100 Mbps (10 times faster than before). Users - professors, students and employees - will thus be able to transfer files more quickly and will enjoy many new services: on-line learning with images and video in real time, parallel processing by clustered computers, file sharing, and workstation videoconferencing. For some special initiatives, such as research projects, specialized servers will be connected to the network with a speed of 1Gbps (100 times faster than before).

The rollout of the system was entrusted to Bell Canada. The project took only 13 months to complete, which is a feat in itself. To carry out the project, the entire campus had to be re-wired. UQÀM's converged network is based on Cisco's industry-leading routing, switching and IP communications technology. The backbone is composed of redundant Cisco Catalyst 6509 switches. Four Cisco CallManager servers and three Cisco Unity^TM servers share call processing and voice messaging services to provide maximum reliability and redundancy.