The World Football Governing Body, FIFA, announced yesterday the start of the Information Technology preparations ahead of next summer's Germany World Cup. Together with its IT solutions partner Avaya will audit all stadiums to ensure the technical infrastructure is in place for media representatives and the Organising Committee.

The operation will provide support for staff accreditation, logistical operations, transport and other services. The only problem is that the German Bundesliga championship is not finishing until the end of May.

"We have tested or will be testing every single device as part of our stringent procedures. Before the tournament starts we need to make sure every voice and data switch is working and that we have minimised every possible issue," said Doug Gardner, managing director of Avaya’s Fifa World Cup programme.

The next year's World Cup Tournament will feature a very high-tech environment hosted on a data centre at which each stadium will connect to via a secure Internet connection. Gardner said that "The FIFA Organising Committee’s applications are already up and working, and in the coming months we will be running 2002 tournament data over the network to see how it performs."

Part of this network has already been used in Leipzig's draw, where over 1600 journalists went through the accreditation system successfully.

"Everything we learn now will feed into the 2006 FIFA World Cup network, which will be the culmination of our work with Avaya on this project. This is an important technological challenge in its own right, but also helps us to scale our converged communications infrastructure appropriately for the World Cup next summer," said Mike Kelly, head of FIFA's IT solutions.

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