Audio Conferences

Accord Telecommunications, the company that has redefined the network conferencing and collaboration industry with next-generation multipoint audio, video, and data conferencing solutions, recently announced that Credit Suisse First Boston (CSFB), a leading global investment banking firm, has chosen to integrate the Accord MGC-100 multipoint control and gateway unit as a key component in its international audio conferences network.

CSFB has made a significant investment in conferencing equipment, having deployed over 150 systems worldwide under the management of a staff of more than 35 people. The company decided to bring the conferencing network in-house to gain greater control over their multipoint conferences - which accounts for more than 30 percent of all videoconferences held within CSFB.

"After completing our bandwidth consolidation and negotiation efforts, the prices we were paying to use an outside service provider for bridging and network suddenly seemed excessive. We reviewed all of the MCUs available and chose the Accord MGC-100 for several reasons including an unprecedented level of performance, scalability and reliability; an open architecture ensuring easy integration of new standards; a high-speed bus that allows high bandwidth features to be scaled with no performance degradation or bottlenecks; and an extremely flexible user interface guaranteeing that you are never more than two mouse clicks away from setting up a conference," said Department Head, Global Media Services, Credit Suisse First Boston.

CSFB's videoconferencing network is used to conduct executive meetings, analyst briefings, corporate presentations, staff meetings, and interviews. It supports employees, customers and partners in more than 20 locations including New York, London, Hong Kong, and Zurich.

"This is a terrific win for Accord. The level of sophistication and the continued growth of the CSFB videoconferencing network require a next-generation MCU that is reliable, supports multiple network types and offers advanced conference management features. We are pleased that we had the solution that CSFB required and we look forward to a strong customer-focus relationship with CSFB and all of our enterprise customers," said Senior Vice President, Worldwide Sales and Marketing, at Accord.

The Accord MGC-100 is quickly becoming the industry's MCU of choice due to its extremely high call completion rate, its ease of management and maintenance, and its sophisticated feature set. Features include: easy integration of ISDN, IP and ATM conferences in a single-platform solution; connectivity of up to 84 ISDN remote sites, 80 ATM sites and 132 IP sites; six layouts of Continuous Presence; Multi-way Transcoding; Touch Tone Conference Management; and an award-winning, user-friendly Greet and Guide capability.

Accord Telecommunications develops next-generation network solutions that are revolutionizing the conferencing industry. The company markets and supports multipoint gateway and control systems for the multimedia conferencing industry. The MGC-100 is known worldwide for its robust architecture, sophisticated feature set, ease-of-maintenance, and conference management functions.

It is the industry's first MCU to offer a single platform for ISDN Internet/LAN and ATM conferencing. It is the industry's first MCU to offer Multiway Transcoding, Continuous Presence with six different layouts, and integrated T.120. Enabling live, interactive multimedia communications between two or more conferencing endpoints, the MGC-100 supports 8-84 ISDN conference participants, and up to 80ATM conference participants and Internet/LAN conference participants.

All systems use the same card set for easy expansion and investment protection. Accord continues to commit to comply with the ITU standards for multimedia conferencing including H.320, H.323, and the G series for audio compression and the T.120 standard suite for data transfer and application sharing.