Tasked with ensuring the transmission of secure election data from the country’s most remote regions, Vizada and Inmarsat designed a network strategy to address transmission needs, data security, reliability and support through a BGAN-based network. Along with partner Arycom, this strategy delivered the necessary training, support and information management to ensure that election data would be transmitted securely, accurately and efficiently to the country’s central election headquarters. Data was processed in a record time of one hour after the polls closed.
During the 24 hours leading up to and following each of the two election rounds, Vizada and Inmarsat managed nearly 15,000 voice and data calls from over 1,400 voting sites across three time zones in Brazil. Prior to the early October election, Vizada activated and delivered more than 1,400 SIM cards to partner Arycom for use in the BGAN terminals used to transmit electronic election data from voting machines installed in remote precincts. The number of cards, which were activated over seven days, is roughly equal to the number of SIM cards Vizada typically processes in three months, requiring the full effort of the entire Vizada Customer Care team. While Vizada preloaded the SIMs with initial airtime, Arycom increased available airtime throughout the elections via Vizada’s online account management system, The Source. Vizada and Inmarsat each dedicated extensive technical resources throughout the pre-election network testing, voting and final transmission of results. This included on-the-ground, cross-company support, 24x7 customer care and real-time troubleshooting throughout the process.
Given the national security concerns with transmission of election results, Vizada’s network engineers located in the United States and Europe implemented a dedicated Terralink Interconnect solution — a secure link using site-to-site IP security and a VPN tunnel from Vizada’s New York City PoP to the Brazilian election HQ data facility. In addition to providing election support to Brazil, and as part of its expanding work in Central and South America, Vizada recently trained service providers through its Vizada Solutions Certification Program in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Additionally, the team was in Miami, FL, last week providing service provider training for the region. More than 25 partners have been fully certified since the program launched last year, and an additional 20 partners have been partially certified. Vizada plans to offer additional training sessions for its service partners in Latin America during 2011.