Reliance Communications announced today that it was partnering with Polycom, a global leader in tele-presence and video conferencing services. This partnership would introduce high-resolution wireless video-conferencing services, to be marketed by Reliance Webstore, the retail arm of the Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group.
The service would be commercially rolled out in over 40 cities immediately and reach 60 cities in four months. Reliance Webstore plans to expand it to 100 cities by the end of the year. Reliance Webstore already sells wired video conferencing services to over 1,500 companies. It does so through a network of 200 video conferencing suites. Polycom’s technology, coupled with its broadband services, reduces the cost of their wireless service. Reliance plans to extend this service to small and medium-sized enterprises, as well as individual consumers.
The new offering comes with Polycom’s QDX6000 video conferencing system, with dedicated virtual private network connectivity through the Reliance Netconnect Broadband, with a wireless broadband data card.
The entire equipment comes for Rs 2 lakh and has a connectivity plan of Rs 1,500 per month for a usage of 10 GB. On a pay-per-use basis, a managed video conferencing service costs Rs 1,500 for every half-hour.
“This service will serve small and medium-sized enterprises. We have brought it down to retail for walk-in customers who need it for social gatherings and education purposes,” said Sarup Chowdhary, director and CEO, Reliance Webstore.
Reliance services 200-300 video conferences a day and 20,000 video conferencing hours a month. It hopes this market would expand with their new service and expects a revenue upside of Rs 400 crore over five years for Reliance Webstore.
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Polycom’s system has been altered to meet the requirements of this low-cost offering to India. Their system enables CD-quality audio along with high-resolution video, even at a bandwidth of 256 kbps.
“India ranks among the top eight markets for video conferencing,” says Hansjoerg Wagner, MD, Polycom Asia Pacific.