The alliance consists of European operators Deutsche Telekom AG, France Telecom Orange, Telecom Italia and Telefónica as well as vendors Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson, Italtel, Nokia Siemens Networks, Polycom and Quanta Computer.
The group says that is had selected a common set of capabilities based on existing 3GPP and GSMA standards.
It is the third such alliance in recent weeks with the Global Meeting Alliance, between Tata, Safaricom, Telstra, Etisalat, Qtel, Mobily, Neotel, Sprint, Glowpoint and Telus announced at the end of January and a telepresence partnership between Verizon and BT announced earlier this month.
The latest initiative claims that it 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 centre”.
What is unique about this particular partnership is the inclusion of so many vendors, as opposed to the other alliances which are dominated by operators. This may place it in a stronger position than the other groups by enabling multi vendor solutions.
With so many alliances announced recently, it is clear that competition in the telepresence market is heating up.
