A group of Telco Industry leaders announce an open solution for standardised videoconference services

22nd February 2012, Madrid.– A group of the world’s leading telecommunications operators (Deutsche Telekom AG, Orange, Telecom Italia and Telefónica) and equipment vendors (Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson, Italtel, Nokia Siemens Networks, Polycom and Quanta Computer) have selected a common set of capabilities based on existing 3GPP and GSMA standards to demonstrate an open solution for videoconference services which allow inter-operability among them.

This initiative will lead to the creation of an open, interoperable and multi-operator environment that supports easy to use services across networks and video equipment, regardless of the country of origin or destination of the call and overcoming the need for support of an operator’s service center.

Up to now, the growth of the videoconferencing market has been constrained by the lack of interoperability among networks and manufacturers. Current videoconference services only work in closed solution environments and face significant difficulties when switching between networks and/or video equipment from different manufacturers located in different countries. For this reason, available videoconferencing solutions often target high-profile corporate customers via sometimes costly single vendor solutions which have to be managed by the operator’s own service centers.

The companies involved in this initiative will bring a demonstration of the new interoperable HD videoconference capabilities to MWC 2012 held in Barcelona from the 27th of February to the 1st of March. Samples of practical use will be demonstrated at the Telefónica (Hall 8), Ericsson (Hall 6) and Polycom’s (Stand 2D01) stands, connecting to Deutsche Telekom in Germany and Telecom Italia, in Italy. The services shown will be based on 3GPP IMS and uses GSMA IPX to interconnect enabling point-to-point as well as multi-party HD video conferences, regardless of video user equipment, access network or country of origin and destination with a customer experience as easy as a phone call.

This initiative is open to all operators and vendors so we all turn videoconferencing into a fully interoperable mass market service that can connect everything from mobile phones and tablets to large telepresence rooms into one globally supported network.

According to Scott Morrison, Managing VP, Gartner: “Personal devices such as tablets are significantly accelerating the adoption of videoconferencing softclient solutions, and we expect video softclients will be pervasively deployed on all multifunction tablet devices used in the enterprise — whether enterprise supplied or employee-owned. But for the proliferation of personal video to take off, the cost of providing video connectivity will need to dramatically decline from where it is today”*

* Gartner,” Market Trends: Videoconferencing, Worldwide, 2011” by Scott Morrison, 28 April 2011

Alcatel-Lucent

• Mark Hudson
• Director, Communications
• Phone: +1.405.844.6827
• Mark.Hudson@alcatel-lucent.com

Ericsson

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Italtel

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Nokia Siemens Networks

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Orange

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Quanta Computer

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Telecom Italia

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Telefónica

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Polycom

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• Deborah Thomas
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• twitter:eborahthomas12

Deutsche Telekom

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