Comms vendor Avaya and telco BT have extended their global partnership for a further three years.

The telco firms are looking to deepen their partnership which covered contact centre equipment and services and explore new areas including voice and unified communications (UC).

As part of the relationship, BT will provide integration and consultancy services to support the Avaya product suite. Avaya and BT will jointly market and sell the products and services to businesses around the world.

The new agreement between the two companies covers next-generation contact centres, unified communications and services, and complements BT's portfolio of networked IT services.

Both firms have been working together for the past 10 years.

Following Avaya’s acquisition of former rival Nortel, its relationship with BT has been under close scrutiny from the comms industry.

Nortel, which entered Chapter 11 in early 2009, had a longstanding relationship with BT, signing a four-year partnership as recently as May 2009 – Avaya agreed a deal two months prior to that.