Olympics story by Gareth Bowman, Mon, 05 Dec 2005 10:24:00 GMT


LONDON - BT, the British telecoms behemoth has indicated that it wants to play a key sponsorship role in the London Olympics in 2012. To this effect the company has been taking to senior executives responsible for the conduct of the Games.

It is reported that BT has been mulling a possible sponsorship role and has already begun talks with Atos Origin, the company that is responsible for the IT systems in all the Games that are to be conducted up to the 2012 Olympics. Atos is contracted by the International Olympics Committee.

It has emerged that at a meeting in Turin BT considered the various ways in which it could get involved in the whole process and also what possible sectors that it could bid for. When asked about which way the talks were going, a BT spokesperson only said, “We have many meetings with many companies about many things.”

The leading British Telecoms partner was a key partner in the London Olympics bid and as always there is no question of receiving any favors when it comes to handing out contracts for the Games per se. However, with its vast reach, BT is ideally positioned to provide the traditional services in telecommunications in the games and it has already begun laying out installing a fibre network in the Lea Valley. This area is the location for the athletes' village during the Olympics.

Meanwhile, Atos Origin has indicated that the 2008 Olympic Games slated to be held in Beijing, could be presented on an open-source platform. "We have a plan to propose this for Beijing. It will save money on the licenses," said Claude Philipps, the program director at Atos Origin, who is responsible for the 2006 Winter Games in Turin. "The issue might be support because, especially in China, you don't have all the companies we have in Europe and the U.S."

He said that the support issue was the only hindrance, but that the final decision would be taken after considering all possibilities. While wireless has been ruled out of the Turin Games, it could be ropes in for the Beijing Games and Cisco's network admin control would probably be used, according to Massimo Dossetto, who is the IT security architect for the Turin Games.

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