Tata Communications Expands Cisco TelePresence Rooms For Public Use

Tata Communications, has announced the launch of its telepresence rooms available for public use in the United States and United Kingdom, linking to additional public rooms in Mumbai, Bangalore and Chennai, India. The collaboration between Tata Communications and Cisco enables the provision of this managed telepresence service, which delivers public and private Cisco TelePresence rooms to companies globally. This new service will allow companies and individuals to use Cisco TelePresence for one-off meetings.

Tata Communications is working with Cisco, Taj Hotels owner, the Indian Hotels Company, and the Confederation of India Industries (CII) to offer public telepresence facilities, which are available for rent on an hourly basis. The first phase of public rooms was launched in India in July at the Taj Hotels in Mumbai and Bangalore, and CII offices in Bangalore and Chennai. Tata plans to make 100 rooms available globally by the end of 2009.

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Vinod Kumar, COO, Tata Communications, said, “This innovation enables our global customers to join a wider ecosystem of users via public access rooms allowing them to not only communicate virtually in real-time but providing a cost-effective and eco-friendly solution.”

The public room offering creates a larger network of interconnected rooms and expands the telepresence market to small and mid-sized businesses. Tata Communications’ managed service offers a professionally run concierge service that handles reservations, scheduling, customer support, monitoring, management, reporting and billing capabilities.

“Public Cisco TelePresence rooms provide global organisations with a cost effective way to connect in virtual ‘in person’ meetings with key customers, partners and suppliers around the globe. Our objective was to collaborate with a company to launch a Cisco TelePresence solution that was innovative and cost effective for businesses whatever their size,” said Cisco chief Globalisation Officer, Wim Elfrink. “These Public Cisco TelePresence rooms join a Cisco TelePresence ecosystem that spans almost 300 rooms internal to Cisco and more than 1,000 rooms installed by over 200 customers. Cisco TelePresence is now represented in over 60 countries worldwide.”

Tata Communications have plans to open additional rooms in Hyderabad, Gurgaon, and New York later this year, with a more extensive global rollout of 100 rooms planned to be deployed by 2009.