In the space of a few short years, the voice and data network business for which Doug Gardner works has been spun out of AT&T as part of Lucent and has now become a full independent company using the name "Avaya".

Although the company has a customer-base in 90 countries, it is seeking to make the Avaya name even better-known in the boardrooms where the major decisions on networks are taken.

As the "Official Convergence Communication Provider" for the 2002 World Cup finals in Korea and Japan, Mr Gardner hopes that by the time the final whistle has blown, the company will have become an instantly-recognised brand. A cumulative audience of 33bn people across 196 countries watched the World Cup in 1998 - and those figures could be even greater this year.

As Avaya's regional managing director for the Fifa (the international governing body of football) World Cup programme, Mr Gardner is responsible for building what is believed to be the world's largest combined voice and data network. It will link 20 stadiums, two international media centres and two headquarters spread across two countries. Avaya's five-year contract also covers the 2003 Women's World Cup in China and the 2006 World Cup in Germany.

"The World Cup offers a unique opportunity to build our brand recognition," says Mr Gardner. "It is the largest and most widely watched event on the planet and is a major sport in all the key countries that we are targeting. You couldn't buy the brand recognition advertising for anywhere near the investment we are making."

The network involves installing 2,000 miles of structured fibre optic and copper cabling, 25 enterprise communications servers, 200 access point routers, 150 wide area network ports and 100 data networking switches, all supporting 40,000 connections and five virtual private networks.

The maximum load occurs on two separate days when five matches are played simultaneously, with 10,000 devices operating, including telephones. "For the length of the championship, the network will be as large as those of the largest enterprises in the world and twice the size of the Olympics," says Mr Gardner.

With only five refurbished stadiums - all the others were "greenfield sites" - it was an easy decision to install a converged voice and data network, reducing costs and making it easier to manage the network. Existing equipment in some of the refurbished stadiums was removed to provide identical equipment throughout.

Broadcast traffic is handled by a separate network. As with all sporting events, the broadcasting rights are sold at a very high price and the broadcasting companies want to control their content. "It is an issue that the industry is going to have to face eventually," he says.

Wireless network connections at are being provided in the two headquarters and the two media centres in Seoul and Yokahama. In addition, connections will be provided to photographers beside the pitch. They will be able to use their laptop computers to e-mail pictures direct to their editors. Journalists in the stands will have asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL) fixed connections.

With such a high profile event, reliability is paramount and Avaya has engineered the network to the maximum. "We have taken the approach of 'two belts and two pairs of braces'," says Mr Gardner. "We have a lot of duplication in equipment, connections and support engineers.

Problems have been relatively minor because FIFA was aware of the issues involved. The biggest issue that Mr Gardner has faced was understanding just how big the project is - it involves a large number of matches over a long period of time. "With two organising committees in Japan and Korea, it is really like doing two World Cups," he says. "It is exactly twice the size of France 98, which had only had 10 stadiums."

As part of its overall system testing process, FIFA will use France 98 data to simulate five simultaneous matches. During that test, Avaya will have people 'making mischief' by unplugging servers, disconnecting routers, turning power switches off, and so on. This will test both the performance of the network, the responses of the Avaya engineers and the operational plan.

The use of voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) to route telephone calls free over the network will save FIFA several hundred thousand dollars in telephone call costs. "VoIPis going to be transparent to the users," says Mr Gardner. "It will be a very good test of its validity on a very large and mission-critical network."

One fact that makes World Cup sponsorship highly valuable is that, unlike the Olympics, viewers see the same television picture throughout the world. Avaya has bought on-screen credits during the matches. "Between 60m and 120m eyeballs are going to see our on-screen credits," says Mr Gardner.

Although Avaya's efforts are focused on building its brand to attract more customers, its existing customers should also benefit.

The company - which employs 23,000 people, including 10,000 engineers in the area of enterprise communications - sometimes has difficulty acquiring real-time information on the performance of its networks, products and interconnections, as its customers are reticent to release it. But it will have development engineers on site to capture log information and report it back to the development laboratories.

Once the event is over, some of the equipment will be used in China in 2003 and some will be installed in the German organising committee's new offices in Frankfurt. By 2006 there will be so much technological advancement that the company will provide new equipment.

With the networking industry going through bad times, can Avaya afford the luxury of such an involvement? The company has to build and manage a complex network for nothing, buy sponsorship and carry out an associated marketing programme.

"The $100m investment is spread over five years," says Mr Gardner. "It would cost too much more to buy the value that we will get out of the World Cup on the advertising market. It proves our credibility to our customers, business partners and employees. If you retract too much on the wrong things, when the situation starts to pick up it takes a lot of momentum to catch up to where you were."

Mr Gardner is expecting problems, minor issues and last minute changes. "But we will be more than ready - and our network will deliver the best World Cup yet," he concludes. "After that, a CEO will know that we are 'the people who did the World Cup'."

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