Tata Communications (NYSE: TCL) has joined with nine other global service providers to create what it calls the Global Meeting Alliance, an open ecosystem of service providers that have aligned to interconnect their respective business video networks.
Joining Tata are a number of global service providers operating in five countries, including Sprint (NYSE: S), Glowpoint (OTC BB: GLOW.OB) and TELUS (Toronto: T.TO) in North America, Safaricom in Africa, Telstra (ASX: TLS.AX) in Australia, Etisalat, Qtel and Mobily in the Middle East, and Neotel in South Africa.
While videoconferencing and telepresence are services that have been gaining increased momentum as executives look for ways to curb travel costs to see clients and other company members, the challenge is each location will be using separate service providers.
Through the advent of the Global Meeting Alliance network, any service provider can connect their business customers on all major continents regardless of the service provider.
Having already established a large number of intercarrier agreements with service providers like Sprint and Verizon, any Global Meeting Alliance member customer will have access an international Telepresence network of third party video endpoints, as well as the largest global public Telepresence room network consisting of 40 public Telepresence suites in 20 countries.
Members of the community will also look for ways to solve any common telepresence industry challenges they may face in helping customers connect to "affordable" videoconferencing services on a global basis.
This new alliance builds on the one-off arrangements made by Tata and Sprint have done over the past year to enable each of their own respective video exchange customers conduct telepresence meetings using each other's network.
For more:
- see the release
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