BT opens international telepresence centres

Business people in multiple countries can now meet face to face around a virtual table thanks to new high definition video conferencing services provided by BT. The services enable organisations to boost their green credentials by swapping air-travel for the use of telepresence technology

And now potential customers can trial the service following the opening of three “Showcase Network Centres” opened by BT in London and the US.

The centres showcase the HD telepresence video conferencing technology of BT’s partners, Cisco, Polycom and Tandberg as well as BT’s leading software applications. The centres highlight the potential of BT Global Video Exchange, an award-winning service that allows Cisco TelePresence connections between different companies.

“High definition video and telepresence are taking conferencing to the next level,”said Jeff Prestel, of BT Conferencing’s video business unit.

BT’s credentials in this field are impressive. Research carried out on its own use of video conferencing showed that the BT used it to eliminate staff travelling to more than 850,000 meetings in 2007, making savings of nearly £0.25bn in that year.

Analysts predict that telepresence will be the strongest growth area in the video market this year.