ACADEMIA

Neotel will be providing connectivity for the much-awaited 17th Conference of the Parties (COP17) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, being held in Durban from 28 November – 9 December. Neotel will provide WiFi access for the entire conference as well as, together with partners CISCO and Dimension Data, power Telepresence rooms available for public use throughout the event, with connectivity via the Tata Communications global network.

Telepresence is the next generation video collaboration technology that creates an immersive virtual meeting environment that can make geographically dispersed users feel as if they are together in the same room.

In keeping with COP17’s climate change agenda, the Telepresence rooms at the event will provide 20,000 delegates access to a game-changing collaboration tool that makes a significant impact on climate change via a reduced carbon footprint. Meetings held using Telepresence have a positive impact on the environment as a result of the reduced need to physically travel across continents. Operating a Telepresence room for one year has the same carbon footprint as a one-way transatlantic flight, and uses the same amount of energy as the ton of jet fuel that a jumbo jet burns between boarding and take off.

Sunil Joshi, Managing Director and CEO of Neotel, says, “Neotel is the only service provider in South Africa that can provide domestic and international connectivity with the exceptional high performance bandwidth capacity required for such technologies to be leveraged at such an event. In partnership with leading technology companies Tata Communications, Dimension Data and CISCO, COP 17 will now be able to seamlessly connect to and collaborate with the rest of the world – in real time and with high definition video and special audio effects.”

The Telepresence rooms at COP17 will be connected, via Neotel, into Tata Communications’ Global Meeting Exchange, one of the broadest and widest-reaching Telepresence networks available today. The rooms will also be a gateway to Tata Communications’ public room Telepresence network which spans 36 rooms across five continents including the first public Telepresence room on its network in Africa, at Neotel’s headquarters in Midrand. This network reach makes Telepresence a truly global business collaboration tool.

Vinod Kumar, MD & CEO, Tata Communications says, “Environmental sustainability and responsible business practices are key values within our own business strategy and operations. COP17 plays an extremely important role in raising the awareness of this ethos on the world’s stage and we are delighted to be able to provide game-changing innovation, such as Telepresence, directly for its delegates to experience.”

Many of Tata Communications’ public Telepresence room partners are supporting the COP17 event and climate change initiative by waiving rental charges when their rooms are used for a meeting with a COP17 delegate. These partner rooms include Starwood (global), PLDT (Philippines), Compass (Hong Kong), Rendezvous (Singapore), TPEX (Amsterdam), Euratechnologies (France) and Confederation of Indian Industries (India). In addition, Magyar Telekom, Desca and TSTT in Trinidad and Tobago have also agreed to open their private rooms.