Global Meeting Alliance launch announced

NEW YORK, USA: Tata Communications, together with nine global service providers, on Tuesday announced the launch of the Global Meeting Alliance, an open ecosystem of leading telecom providers that have aligned to interconnect their respective business video communities.

Launch members include Safaricom in Africa, Telstra in Australia, Etisalat, Qtel and Mobily in the Middle East, Neotel in South Africa and Sprint, Glowpoint and TELUS in North America. The launch represents the largest functioning global collaboration between service providers in business video services.

Peter Quinlan, Vice President, Integrated Business Video Services, Tata Communications, says, “Tata Communications continues to demonstrate its commitment to facilitating an open, global ecosystem that moves business video from an intracompany experience to a collaboration tool with worldwide reach. The Global Meeting Alliance is central to this strategy, and today, all alliance members are taking a major step towards making an open community for business video a reality.”

The Global Meeting Alliance network allows any service provider to connect to enterprises and institutions on all major continents, irrespective of service provider, following a similar business model to the airline alliance networks. Leveraging Tata Communications’ industry-leading number of intercarrier agreements, customers of the Global Meeting Alliance members now have access to an international Telepresence network of 3rd party video endpoints, as well as the largest global public Telepresence room network consisting of 40 public Telepresence suites in 20 countries. In addition, the community will engage in a collaborative approach to solve shared-industry challenges with the central objectives of making business video available globally, simple to connect and affordable for all.

"This is a major step forward for the video conferencing industry and its customers," says Andrew W. Davis, Senior Partner and Co-Founder of Wainhouse Research. "By making B2B calls easier and by interconnecting different carriers, the Global Meeting Alliance will drive the usage of videoconferencing and Telepresence systems, enabling customers to see faster and higher returns on their investments. With its history of wholesale network services, intercarrier experience, and public room support, Tata Communications is in a unique position to launch this alliance."

The Global Meeting Alliance will simplify the launch and operation of business video worldwide, making it more affordable and enabling service providers to optimise their regional networks to interconnect with a global network and conferencing infrastructure maintained by the Global Meeting Alliance operator.