College of the Canyons Selects NEC Emergency Campus Notification Solution for Enhanced Communications.

Designed for Use in Urgent Situations, ECN Enables Fast Communication of Critical Information with Students, Faculty

IRVING, Texas -- NEC Unified Solutions, Inc., a leading provider of VoIP and data communications, today announced College of the Canyons in Santa Clarita, Calif., has approved the installation and use of Emergency Campus Notification (ECN), a software-based management system for mass notification offered by NEC.

"Southern California is prone to certain natural events, such as wildfires and earthquakes, and campuses everywhere are affected by the unfortunate events at Virginia Tech," said Jim Shrage, vice president of operations for College of the Canyons. "In this day and age, we are committed to keeping our students, faculty and staff aware of their surroundings. ECN is our preferred state-of-the-art notification tool to achieve this, in large part because it can leverage today's most popular and convenient communication method for students - SMS text messaging."

Sold to College of the Canyons by Digital Telecommunications Corp. (DTC), an NEC-exclusive dealer serving the U.S. pacific states, ECN provides a centralized command center for alerting and notifying groups of students, faculty and staff. The solution enables quick notification to a variety of communication destinations including pagers, home, office and cellular telephone numbers, SMS text messages, e-mail and PDAs, as well as immediate notification of first responders. Messages can be sent immediately or at pre-defined times.

College of the Canyons, which already uses NEC's UNIVERGE NEAX 2400 voice platform, has an approximate enrollment of 19,000 students with roughly 4,000 on campus on any given weekday. In addition, the college employs roughly 2,000 faculty and staff. The college recently opened its new Canyon Country Education Center serving an additional 3,200 students and 175 faculty and staff, all of whom will also benefit from ECN.

Additionally, Schrage said the college may leverage ECN's capabilities for other critical campus-wide notifications. ECN's compatibility with most database applications allows users to easily segment and target groups of students and faculty on short-notice.

"By selecting ECN for mass alerts and notifications, College of the Canyons is on the leading edge of campus emergency communications," said Ray Maccani, vice president of sales for DTC. "As one of just a few NEC dealers with specialized expertise in vertical markets, DTC is dedicated to providing higher education institutions with the latest communications solutions for improved awareness and learning."

ECN is offered in conjunction with XTEND Communications Corp., a provider of mission-critical telecommunications systems. The XTEND product line includes the TESS[TM] (Telecommunications Enhancing School Safety) family of products designed to equip the modern campus with the tools to most quickly and accurately assess and respond to an emergency situation. For additional information, visit www.xtend.com.

For additional information about NEC's solutions for higher education, please visit us online at www.necunified.com/highered.

For more information, please visit:

* College of the Canyons - www.canyons.edu

* Digital Telecommunications Corp. - www.digitaltel.com

* NEC Unified Solutions - www.necunified.com

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