Airtel partners with Avaya to boost remote working and learning

Airtel Nigeria has announced that it has signed a new partnership with Avaya to boost remote working and learning initiatives in the West African nation.

Through the partnership, Avaya will offer organisations and enterprises in Nigeria full-feature access to its flagship collaboration app, Avaya Spaces, on a complimentary basis, through Airtel Nigeria.

Commenting on Airtel’s partnership with Avaya on Avaya Spaces, Oladokun Oye, head of enterprise division, at Airtel Nigeria, said his company is committed to exploring opportunities and possibilities that will drive learning and enterprise operations while empowering entrepreneurs, enterprises and students to become more productive and successful.

“Our partnership with Avaya supports key sectors by enabling organizations to maintain the safety of workers, students and customers as their top priority, while ensuring minimum disruption to everyday business.”

“We have invested in building a robust telecommunications network as an enabler of business continutity. Today, this investment will support the continued delivery of services as well as sustaining economic activities, regardless of location and physical spaces,” he said.

Avaya Spaces changes the way work gets done, bringing together globally distributed teams instantly with immersive, 24/7 collaboration. Seamless integration makes Avaya Spaces easy to use with the cloud solutions that organisations already use.

The Avaya Spaces app is available on Android and iOS devices, and can also be securely accessed on personal computers and laptops via Chrome or Firefox browsers.

With obvious use cases for schools, it enables teachers and administrative staff to reliably communicate with parents, students and each other to minimise learning disruption amid the school closure. Using the app, students will be able to participate in virtual classrooms from any location, with the ability to download study materials and send assignments to teachers electronically.

Since January, Avaya has seen an increase of more than 3,200 percent in video collaboration traffic on the Avaya Spaces platform. Several hundred universities, schools and other organisations worldwide have engaged Avaya to gain the connectivity and collaboration capabilities Avaya Spaces provides as they address the challenges of COVID-19 pandemic.

Thousands of businesses have also moved online with Avaya Spaces, using the app to conduct virtual events, launch magazines, keep teams engaged, and enable business continuity.

“As the COVID-19 crisis has developed, we have reacted quickly and decisively in providing  collaboration technology on a complimentary basis to help those most affected. We are proud to be able to do the same in Nigeria in partnership with Airtel Nigeria, which has shown its commitment to social obligations. Together, we aim to help Nigerian organisations minimize the disruption caused by COVID-19 and begin building a brighter future,” said Nour Al Atassi, director, service providers, Middle East, Africa & Asia Avaya.

It will be recalled that Airtel, earlier in the year, had committed N1.97Bn towards the fight against COVID-19 in Nigeria.

Providing a breakdown of the pledged sum, Airtel said it offered free Short Message Services (SMS) to customers across all networks worth over N1.2Bn as well as complimentary data for customers to access educational sites worth over N494m.

The telco also zero-rated traffic to select sites including Federal Ministry of Health and the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) worth over N30m just as it has commenced a multi-million-naira educational awareness campaign to sensitize Nigerians on steps to take to prevent the Coronavirus.

Airtel further committed N160m to support the NCDC, Port Health Services and the 36 States, including the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).

According to Airtel, it is offered toll-free lines to each of the 36 States including the FCT to help in the fight against COVID-19 and is also connecting the NCDC’s offices nationwide with Broadband services.

Airtel also announced that it has offered devices and toll-free lines to the NCDC and also provided the Port Health Services with devices and Closed User Group (CUG) lines.

Airtel further states that the complementary video services through collaboration with Avaya Spaces is another demonstration of its commitment towards the fight against COVID-19 targetted at minimising the spread of the pandemic in the country.