AT&T has been to commercial customers around the globe for a year.
Now AT&T Government Solutions is offering to agencies on the General Services Administration's Schedule 70 contract. AT&T also plans to add Cisco's high-end video conferencing systems to , a 10-year, US$25 billion telecommunications services program run by GSA.
The AT&T Government Solutions offering includes Cisco's TelePresence systems bundled with room set-up, monitoring, maintenance and around-the-clock help desk support. The Cisco telepresence systems operate over AT&T's network.
AT&T didn't provide pricing for its telepresence solutions, saying that cost varies based on the number of locations, the length of the contract and the type of equipment used. However, Cisco's TelePresence 3000 package, which includes three display panels, costs $249,000, while the TelePresence 1000 package, which has one display panel, costs $59,000.
Don Herring, senior vice president of AT&T Government Solutions, predicts telepresence systems will take off in the federal market because they reduce travel costs and support intra- and inter-agency collaboration as well as collaboration between the public and private sectors, which is a priority for the Obama Administration.
"We think telepresence is going to revolutionize the way meetings are done," Herring said during a live demonstration of the service held on Tuesday. "This is a great way to collaborate."
One pilot customer is the Department of Veterans Affairs, which bought and installed a Cisco TelePresence system at its Orlando VA Medical Center in Florida and plans to install another at its headquarters location in Washington D.C.
Dave Chiplick, director of the Office of Telecommunications at VA, said the first-generation enterprise video conferencing network. VA is a pioneer in the use of videoconferencing systems for delivering healthcare services in rural areas, using systems from other vendors such as Polycom and Tandberg.
"We believe our use of telepresence systems will expand," Chiplick said, adding that Cisco's high-end systems are "part of a portfolio of capabilities" and that VA is "vendor agnostic."
Internally, Cisco has deployed more than 400 telepresence systems and has held 260,000 meetings using them. Cisco officials say they have saved 105,000 metric tons of carbon emissions by reducing air travel.
AT&T, meanwhile, plans to double the number of Cisco TelePresence rooms that it operates to reach 50 by the end of the year. AT&T says it has cut its travel costs 10% since it began using Cisco's TelePresence systems.
In a separate , AT&T said that by the end of June, customers would be able to connect their legacy H.323 videoconferencing gear to Cisco's TelePresence sessions. This feature should be useful in the federal market, which has a wide range of deployed videoconferencing gear.