AT&T’s global network operations center (GNOC) sits on a 200 acre campus in Bedminster, New Jersey, an hour’s drive from New York City. The operations center links thirty major metropolitan areas nationwide, serving roughly 80 million customers. The building, with its technology-infused infrastructure and unique architectural design, has few precedents. It covers four floors, two above ground and two below, for a total of 198,000 square feet of space.

AT&T is now the largest telecom company in the world, with $120 billion in revenues and more than one hundred million customers.

The building serves several different purposes. In addition to being the nerve center of AT&T’s domestic communications network, the facility is also something of an ambassador for AT&T, allowing customers to experience first-hand what the company does.

The Challenge
The AT&T GNOC is tasked with ensuring continuity of service to AT&T’s global network of state-of-the-art IP, data, wireless and all-distance capabilities that their business clients count on to deploy their complex applications around the world. From the GNOC, AT&T monitors and manages a network that services the world’s leading businesses, including all of the Fortune 1000 companies.

These companies depend on AT&T to provide secure communications. Based on monitoring patterns and predictability, analysts at AT&T’s GNOC can monitor patterns of usage down to the most infinitesimal of details to discover the early warning signs of potential trouble.

The Solution
The GNOC first installed a Christie TotalVIEW™ video wall solution in 1999. The screens covered a wall area 12 feet high by 250½ feet wide. The video wall operates 24/7, 365 days a year for nearly seven straight years — over 61,000 hours — most of the 180 projectors in AT&T’s video wall solution ran continuously. The Christie TotalVIEW™ solution served AT&T well over that period of time, but in 2007, it was time to update it.

AT&T’s experience with their original Christie solution certainly gave Christie the inside track on providing the upgrade solution. Now, seven years later, and ready to upgrade, AT&T once again selected Christie to install a record 141 Christie TotalVIEW™ rear projection modules at the company.

In the fall of 2007, AT&T upgraded their monitoring display wall with leading-edge DLP® projectors from Christie. Utilizing the latest in custom projection technology, AT&T’s GNOC is now able to more efficiently process approximately ten petabytes of data per day. Just for comparison, that equals about a twelve mile stack of CD’s plus approximately three hundred million wired and wireless calls on top of that. Depending on the time of day, the GNOC will process anywhere from one to two million calls in a five minute span.

Decision Making Factors
AT&T’s previous experience with Christie was a definite factor in selecting a Christie TotalVIEW™ upgrade. Other factors included:

• DLP® Quality — The Christie TotalVIEW™ RPMSP-D120U is one of the most powerful single-chip SXGA+ DLP® Rear-projection displays available today, offering exceptional color, uniform brightness, high contrast, and superior long term reliability.
• Reduced Costs — Christie’s next-generation, higher efficiency lamps are expected to save AT&T more than just operational costs. Because the new system will radiate significantly less heat, officials anticipate further savings in the use of air-conditioning, resulting in a reduction of carbon dioxide emissions by more than one million pounds a year.
• Processing Information — The GNOC averages 10 petabytes of data and IP traffic per day. Christie’s video wall controller hardware and software are critical to helping AT&T monitor these data streams and maintain service to their community of customers.

Return on Investment
By upgrading to the latest in video wall display technology from Christie, AT&T’s GNOC has experienced results not only with a more efficient facility, but also recognizes real dollar savings via:

• Reduced service costs, due to longer lasting lamps.
• Reduced stress on existing facility infrastructure such as HVAC and electrical systems, due to more efficient projector technology.
• Seamless integration and leading-edge monitoring capabilities: Christie’s innovative display solutions allow AT&T to avoid service disruption. In fact, AT&T’s immediate coordination of incident response and restoration efforts sets the industry standard for 99.999% network reliability.

Contact Christie
Christie TotalVIEW™ CR solutions use state-of-the-art components to create high-performance video walls with the reliability you need for your 24/7 control room, and the flexibility you need to integrate and display real-time information from a wide variety of sources. You can count on Christie not only to provide the best possible solution, but also to stand behind that solution with after-sales support and maintenance programs that are second to none.

Christie has been manufacturing video wall controllers, display enclosures and projection modules, and building control room display solutions, for over twenty five years. We are the worldwide leader in projection display equipment.

© 2011 AT&T Intellectual Property. All rights reserved. AT&T, the AT&T logo and all other AT&T marks contained herein are trademarks of AT&T Intellectual Property. and/or AT&T affiliated companies.