Tata Communications and BT recently announced an agreement that will allow the two companies to extend usage of their telepresence facilities to each other’s existing video exchange customers. The move is aimed at providing a wider number of telepresence endpoints regardless of the parent network.

The service will help enable telepresence users to reach more partners, suppliers, customers and prospects at public and private end-points and will facilitate globally distributed, real time face-to-face virtual conference meetings that drive greater value to the collaborating businesses.

Using the intercompany service that both organizations are launching, any Cisco TelePresence customer of BT’s Global Video Exchange or Tata Communications’ Global Meeting Exchange can invite clients of the other service provider to join them in multipoint TelePresence meetings. The meetings can be hosted on either the Tata Communications or the BT TelePresence Exchange.

“Trials with current customers across both exchange networks have been strongly received”, says John Landau, SVP, Global Head of Voice, Video and Mobility, Tata Communications.

Customers who wish to use the intercompany service simply need to contact their respective service provider with their request. They will then be given the necessary conferencing information to share with the other meeting participants so that they too can join the meeting. Customers will maintain their existing commercial relationship with their service provider at all times.

BT has more than 350 active TelePresence customer sites connected to Denver and London exchanges and access to more than 1000 endpoints globally.  On an annual basis, BT produces more than 60,000 conferences on more than 25,000 endpoints globally as part of its Global Video Exchange family of services.

Tata Communications has Global Meeting Exchange hubs in Mumbai, New York, and London. The company operates 15 (and growing) public meeting rooms with partners in North America (Boston, Chicago, Toronto and Santa Clara), Asia Pacific (Singapore, Manila and Sydney), India (Bangalore, Chennai, Gurgaon, Hyderabad and Mumbai), London and Johannesburg.