Verizon, BT team on 'immersive-video' conferencing worldwide

BT and Verizon Enterprise Solutions are teaming up by extending their telepresence solutions to enable virtual, face-to-face collaboration in more locations around the world.

The new service leverages Cisco's TelePresence platform. The idea behind it is to offer Verizon and BT customers another digital collaboration option, allowing subscribers of these two companies to be able to set up video conferences across both networks seamlessly.

The expectation here is that customers will be able to reach more endpoints, and customers will likely use this for more business-to-business communications. The target market here is on the larger end, particularly global enterprises in the Fortune 2000.

Sandra O’Boyle, service director for business networks and IT services at Current Analysis, explained in prepared remarks that this venture "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."

Verizon and BT telepresence customers can use the same interface and service quality they already have, with similar scheduling, support, security and encryption.

But now, customers will also have access to a directory listing which organizations are registered and are available for inter-carrier, telepresence meetings, and where the sites are located.

All billing assistance and tech support will be provided by customers' respective service providers.

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