BT And Verizon Team Up To Expand Telepresence Services

Verizon Enterprise Solutions and BT have teamed up in a bid to boost the number of locations in which businesses can teleconference.

The deal will allow users to communicate through Cisco’s TelePresence platform, which the two companies claims replicates face-to-face interactions “so realistically that it feels as though everyone is in the same room”.

Improving teleconferencing

“This initiative between BT and Verizon opens up new opportunities for enterprises to collaborate across their premium video platforms and will help multinational customers make the most of their Cisco TelePresence System investments,” said Sandra O’Boyle, service director for business network and IT services at Current Analysis.

One of the upgrades the deal between the two will bring is access to a directory of organisations registered with Cisco’s TelePresence and their locations in a city. Aside from this addition and the wider network of locations businesses will be able to connect to, much will remain the same for users. All support, security and encryption services will remain the same, and customers will continue to rely on their normal service providers as ‘a single point of contact for telepresence support, assistance and billing’.

“This agreement makes video communications more widely available to meet the needs of the evolving nature of work,” said Mike Palmer, vice president of product strategy at Verizon. “We believe that enabling customers to communicate across networks will speed the adoption of video communications and that one day it will become as ubiquitous as voice communications.

“As businesses adopt collaboration and mobility technologies to expand beyond the four walls of a traditional office, we’re seeing more of our customers turning to advanced collaboration tools like telepresence to help boost their overall productivity and performance.”