Telkom SA joins 2010 FIFA World Cup
08/08/2007 |
 |
 |
FIFA signed up Telkom South Africa as a National Supporter of the 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa™ in the key category of fixed-line telecommunications.
This partnership, sealed by FIFA General Secretary Jérôme Valcke and Telkom SA acting CEO Reuben September at a signing ceremony at SAFA House in Johannesburg, South Africa, makes Telkom SA one of the largest and strategically important South African service companies directly involved in the 2010 FIFA World Cup™ operation. The event was also attended by Danny Jordaan, CEO of the Local Organising Committee (LOC) of the 2010 FIFA World Cup™, and Essop Pahad, South Africa's Minister in the Office of the Presidency.
Telkom SA joins First National Bank as the second company in this sponsorship class and thus gains local marketing rights to both the 2010 FIFA World Cup™ and the FIFA Confederations Cup, which will be held in South Africa in 2009.
Telkom SA will be the main partner for fixed-line network infrastructure provisioning, offering significant value-in-kind services to support the broadcast of the event outside South Africa to an accumulated audience of more than 26 billion people around the globe. Telkom SA will enable the interconnection of important event venues such as the ten stadiums, broadcast compounds, media centres, the international broadcast centre (IBC) and the FIFA and SALOC headquarters.
"A huge volume of mission critical voice and data traffic will move over the FIFA event network during the FIFA Confederations Cup and the FIFA World Cup. This requires a reliable partner to develop the fixed-line components of the necessary telecommunications infrastructure. With Telkom SA, we have found this expert. Telkom has a proven track record in developing and supporting the critical fixed-line business networks we need," said FIFA General Secretary Jérôme Valcke. "This deal not only highlights FIFA's confidence in South Africa as the host nation but also shows that the South African business community believes in the incredibly positive impact the event will have on the country."
The significance of FIFA's deal with Telkom SA is underlined by the statistics from the 2006 FIFA World Cup™, during which more than 21 terabytes of voice and data traffic were transferred over the event network by the 32 teams, FIFA officials, the local organising committee, media and other event operations partners. This translates to nearly eight years of continuous MP3 music. Stated differently, it is equivalent to the 24 million volumes of books, photographs, recordings and other information held at the world's largest library, the United States Library of Congress.
"Telkom views its involvement as a National Supporter of the 2010 FIFA World Cup as an opportunity to team up with the sporting world's greatest showpiece. We are extremely proud to showcase Telkom's world-class infrastructure which will support the broadcast of the event to a global audience of over 26 billion people. Telkom is confident that our involvement in 2010 will contribute towards making this the most spectacular FIFA World Cup tournament yet," emphasised Telkom's acting CEO Reuben September.
South African Minister in the Office of the Presidency Essop Pahad commented: "The Presidency welcomes this agreement with Telkom and is encouraged by Telkom's commitment to the development of information and communication technology in this country. This is good for the 2010 FIFA World Cup and wonderful for South Africa."
"The organising committee is pleased that yet another South African company has shown such tremendous support for the 2010 FIFA World Cup. We look forward to working with Telkom and the other partners, sponsors and supporters in ensuring that the tournament in 2010 is a world-class event and the most successful FIFA World Cup ever," said Danny Jordaan with satisfaction.
(Source: FIFA)
|
| Back |
|
|
|
|
 |
