Orange Business Services, Verizon build telepresence pact

Under the terms of the collaborative interprovider connectivity agreement, Verizon Immersive Video Exchange customers and Orange Telepresence Community customers have more flexibility to conduct videoconferencing sessions with their customers and suppliers. Leveraging Cisco (Nasdaq: CSCO) TelePresence endpoints, each of the service provider's customers can conduct real-time video meetings with one another.

While telepresence solutions are not nearly as ubiquitous as public telephony, these agreements are a necessary means to bridge the so-called telepresence islands that have traditionally existed between service providers.

Both service providers have been aggressively garnering interoperability agreements with a number of major international telcos over the past year.

Orange Business Services has established telepresence interoperability agreements with AT&T (NYSE: T), BT (NYSE: BT), Cisco, Tata (NYSE: TCL), Telefonica (NYSE: TEF) and Verizon. Likewise, Verizon now has agreements with BT, Cisco, Orange and Tata in addition offering its customers an Open Video Communications solution that it says links video systems that were previously incompatible.