'Dial up' virtual reality as TelePresence takes off.

Stuart Corner
Saturday, 03 May 2008 03:07

Your IT - Home IT

A key feature of the BT and AT&T offerings is that they will be the first to provide a 'meet-me' feature that will support inter-company conferencing. AT&T's is expected to be available in the second half of 2008 in 23 countries and more in 2009.

This additional functionality was announced by Cisco in December 2007 with the company claiming that "this groundbreaking technological advancement will provide businesses with the flexibility and security to have "in person' meetings with customers, partners and suppliers with the ease of a simple phone call."

Also on April 30, the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), Tata Communications and Cisco announced plans to set up Telepresence rooms at four CII offices in India: New Delhi, Chennai, Bangalore and Hyderabad. Cisco will provide the TelePresence equipment and Tata Communications the connectivity services. The facilities will be available to CII members on a 'pay-per-use' basis.

Separately Tata Communications is planning to build an international network of TelePresence rooms in locations worldwide and clients will be able to set up conferences between any of these and the CII rooms in India.

Vietnam National Telecoms (VTN) has introduced Cisco TelePresence technology to the country with installations in two demonstration centres in Hanoi and Hochihminh City. Designed to "provide an advanced technological showcase designed to communicate to individuals and organisations in Vietnam the potential benefits of ICT for work, play, education and everyday life, according to Mr. Le Duc Hoa, VTN deputy general director. He added that similar centres may be built in other cities in the country.

Cisco now claims to have around 500 TelePresence rooms (it ha co-oped the generic telepresence name for its own product offering) installed on or order at customer sites around the world since the product's introduction in October 2006.