'Dial up' virtual reality as TelePresence takes off.

Stuart Corner
Saturday, 03 May 2008 04:07

Your IT - Home IT

Cisco appears to be enjoying runaway success with TelePresence, its high-end virtual reality videoconferencing technology, with both AT&T and BT now planning to offer it to corporate client in a way that, Cisco claims enables user to set up virtual  meetings with customers, partners and suppliers "with the ease of a simple phone call."

BT & AT&T - two of the world's largest global telcos - have both announced plans to offer TelePresence as a service to corporate clients, as has Indian telco Tata Communications. And the technology has this week made its debut in Vietnam.

BT demonstrated inter-company TelePresence connectivity at the Cisco Expo 2008 in Berlin on 30 April and used to occasion to announce that it would have global business-to-business services available to customers by September 2008.

Aaron McCormack, CEO of BT Conferencing said, "In December of 2007, BT announced the development of its inter-company B2B service based on Cisco TelePresence, which has generated lots of excitement in our customer base. Now the service is proven to work and we are preparing for commercial launch. Our recent announcement regarding our intended acquisition of Wire One Communications will significantly enhance our service wrap for Cisco TelePresence services."

Wire One Communications was the first company to commercially launch a managed concierge service for Cisco TelePresence and has deployed services for eight global customers with over 30 TelePresence systems in seven countries across North America, Europe, and Asia.

AT&T and Cisco announced in April that they had teamed up to offer the Cisco Telepresence high resolution 'virtual reality' videoconferencing technology for installation in the offices of client companies as a fully managed service. CONTINUED