BANGALORE, India -- AT&T has launched its telepresence rooms in India. The telecom giant said that two AT&T Telepresence Solution rooms in its two Bangalore offices in India are now up and running. The newly installed telepresence rooms will help enable AT&T employees to communicate internally as well as with business associates and customers globally, the company said.

AT&T has been using its own managed AT&T Telepresence Solution for over two years, and currently has more than 57 sites deployed in the United States and globally. The opening of Bangalore telepresence rooms is part of the planned $1 billion global network investment in 2010. AT&T also expects to install additional telepresence facilities in AT&T offices in Singapore and Hinjewadi in India later this year.

“Since launching the AT&T Telepresence Solution within our operations, we have experienced a significant improvement in collaboration across our business units and increased employee productivity,” said Gopi Gopinath, chairman and chief executive officer of AT&T Global Network Services India Pvt. Ltd. “We have also seen the benefits of using telepresence in working more closely with our customers and suppliers. The new telepresence rooms in AT&T India's Bangalore offices represent the latest milestone in AT&T's efforts to expand our usage of telepresence globally.”

Prior to the opening of Bangalore facilities, AT&T demonstrated the telepresence capability to customers at NASSCOM India Leadership Forum earlier this year. AT&T conducted a multipoint telepresence demonstration in India connecting several endpoints at AT&T Telepresence facilities in Hong Kong and Tokyo.

“With the growing awareness and adoption of telepresence globally, we have seen increasing interest from customers in India in AT&T's capabilities in telepresence solutions. The fully-managed AT&T Telepresence Solution provides customers with powerful and cost-effective collaboration tools to speed business transactions and time to market, improve relationships and collaboration, while reducing the impact of carbon emissions on the environment by reducing the need to travel for meetings. Such benefits are being recognized by more of our customers,” added Gopinath. “The Bangalore telepresence facilities present a great opportunity to showcase how efficient and cost-effective this solution is for our business partners and customers.”