FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE May 2006

AdvaTel, one of Australia’s most established organisations servicing the telecommunications industry, has signed a major contract to supply 3D Networks with the industry’s most powerful alarms management system - Teltronic’s Net-Path.

AdvaTel is the sole Australian distributor of the Net-Path family of remote monitoring agents and has in-house expertise in the implementation and advance uses of the system. 3D recently completed a three week training period on Net-Path’s system. Chris Luxford, 3D’s CEO said, “We have been working with AdvaTel for the last three years and look to AdvaTel to assist us in introducing new customer services based features and enhance our business communications offerings to the market.”

Luxford’s engineering team evaluated the Net-Path product and found it to be the highest level of Intelligent Systems Management (ISM). He maintains that the centralised alarms management collection system provides the customer with the most comprehensive suite of management tools available for highly reliable, centralised monitoring, management and maintenance of remote devices or systems. In addition to its alarm event detection and reporting, Net-Path is ideal for data collection and polling, and secure access for remote devices.

The fact that 3D’s National Operations Centre (NOC) engineers are able to remotely monitor and report, in real time, on any changes or unusual developments with regard to its customer resident PABXs delivers real value to 3D’s customers. The company has 50 maintenance support staff based both at its NOC and in the field. With 1500 maintenance sites, 3D generates over $20M yearly.

Michael Terry, AdvaTel’s Managing Director said, “The spectrum of monitored systems has expanded dramatically over the past two years and has necessitated the development and availability of more sophisticated management solutions for the converged telecom market and pure data environment. Only Net-Path has been able to deliver on these needs.”

Commenting on why 3D chose to replace its incumbent monitoring provider with the Net-Path solution, Luxford said Net-Path features enabled 3D to move up the value-add ladder with regard to its interaction with customers. “We can now be proactive rather than reactive. Before, we would receive the data and then have to analyse the status of individual equipment. It was basically a buffer box which we had to interrogate. Now, we read and interpret the monitoring activity in real time and have secure access to the device; and this is increasingly important as we move into genuine IP environments.

3D’s broad industry customer base utilises both sophisticated and legacy PABXs (Private Automatic Branch Exchanges) to handle hundreds of lines directly at each customer location. Any failures in these PABXs disrupt the telephone service in the entire organisation which can prove costly in terms of loss of productivity for businesses, or at times even dangerous (in the case of hospitals, and emergency services).

Incorporating Net-Path into its maintenance arsenal allows 3D to deliver a higher value-add to its customers. “Today, many customers see maintenance contracts as an insurance policy - a commodity product. Net-Path’s intelligent solution provides us with an entry point to our managed services offerings. It enables us to provide a higher level of service and an SLA [Service Level Agreement] to our maintenance customers without needing to increase our resources, allowing us to be differentiated in the market.”

A modern PABX normally carries out extensive self tests continuously and reports the status of the system regularly on a continuous basis through messages and warnings that are displayed on a monitor attached to the customer PABX. “The problem is that these warnings or error messages are left unnoticed since providing an experienced engineer at each customer site just to monitor and interpret these warnings and error messages is just not an option,” said Luxford.

For example, loss of the mains power to the PABX (and the switch to the standby battery power) is a condition that is immediately detected and reported by the PABX. If that fault is noticed and attended to at once, the error can be usually corrected and power restored within hours - possibly without any loss of service. However, the loss of mains power normally goes undetected until the backup batteries are fully discharged and service is lost - a panic and costly situation that can be avoided.

Whether the monitored systems are equipped with a network interface, serial interface or alarm contacts, Net-Path monitors, reports and corrects service-affecting problems, often before the end-user knows that they have occurred. “This means we are now able to offer our maintenance customers a superior service experience, ensuring voice communications uptime at best-practice level,” said Luxford. “In addition to AdvaTel helping us position ourselves strongly in the market, we are delivering proven and welcomed solutions to our customers in a complex converged communications environment.”

About AdvaTel
Established 15 years ago, AdvaTel is an Australian software development company heavily involved in R&D and innovation. It provides a diverse range of advanced, cost effective solutions for the telecommunications industry.

The company is based in Melbourne and has a highly experienced in-house development team able to respond quickly to market demands. AdvaTel generates 45 per cent of its revenue from overseas sales.

Solutions and products are sold globally and through its channel community. AdvaTel is the market leader for call centre queue management solutions. Its softphone solution, the Phone Easy product suite, is delivering quantifiable productivity results for users by converting desktops into virtual phones through its time saving tools, its ability to mine Outlook, drag & drop features, call scheduling and activity monitoring log.

Visit www.advatel.com.au

About 3D Networks
3D Networks is a leading systems integrator and a voice and data convergence specialist offering customised and integrated business communications solutions. Our expertise in both telephony and data networks allows us to offer clients a single point of contact for all integration projects, from analysis through to deployment and support of the network infrastructure throughout the region.

3D Networks is a subsidiary of the Singapore-based Planet One Pte Ltd. Planet One enjoys the support of more than 700 IT professionals across 35 locations serving key markets in Asia Pacific, Middle East, Europe and the US.

Visit www.3DNetworks.com

Media enquiries
Michael Terry, Managing Director, AdvaTel, tel: +61 3 8695 8695
Dolores Diez, Corporate Communications, AdvaTel: +61 3 8695 8695 / 0417 330 881, email: dolores.diez@riversofcom.com