IP and beyond

Reliance is intent on tapping the corporate demand for value-added services such as video conferencing over IP and ‘work at home’.

Heramb Ranade

The broadband market seems extremely promising, and analysts and industry watchers would certainly endorse this view. Exploring the opportunities available in this field is Reliance Communications. Speaking at the Technology Senate was Heramb Ranade, Head, Broadband Product Management, Reliance Communications.

“IP video services have been available for quite a while. It is something that is available right here, right now,” said Ranade. He gave a glimpse into all the available technologies that Reliance Communications has to offer to make your office completely mobile, and also gave an overview of offerings that are in the pipeline.

Cashing in on the fact that people love to work from the comfort of their homes, Reliance was promoting the concept of easy networking to the gathering. Ranade began by explaining about IP video. Reliance IP Video allows multiparty video conferencing. Users can connect to Reliance VideoNet and start a conference. Reliance IP video also supports multiparty conferencing where some users join in from third-party ISDN end-points.

Elaborating on the convenience and ubiquity of the Reliance IP phone services, Ranade added, “We have deployed video studios across 110 locations in the country which could also be used for video conferencing. Your employees or partners could opt for these studios and you could continue talking to them from your office.”

Ranade spoke about bringing video telephony to the desktop. The inconvenience of going to the video studio in order to participate in conference calls could be done away with. “This would allow you to video chat with any of your colleagues across your company,” said Ranade. This would also do away with the need to go to an allocated video conferencing room within the office premises.

He also mentioned that the Reliance Communications service did not restrict the user’s choice of end-point, meaning that the user could choose any device from a computer to a mobile phone to a hand-held device—the service would work no matter what. “The users could even use a combination of a camera and a TV,” said Ranade.

“In the future, we plan to extend support to IP phones,” said Ranade. This, he said, would integrate with the Centrex solution that Reliance Communications offers. “IP Phones will provide a superior experience,” said Ranade.

The IP Phone would offer features like name dialling and name display. It would also have a built-in phone book and maintain a call history. It would come with a high quality speaker-phone and allow simultaneous call handling.

Elaborating on the features, Ranade said, “It has more processing power. On the backend there is high bandwidth available for different applications, so you can use it as a transaction terminal or a terminal where you keep your KPI tickers, get the top business updates for the day, and get your company directory and other custom applications.”

Reliance Communications recognises that people prefer working from home and their solution allows users to do just that. “We call it work from home,” said Ranade. This delivers the same quality that one experiences at work, like being connected at LAN speed. “You don’t have to be in the office. You can come home and check your mail and carry out other operations that you would ideally do on your office intranet,” added Ranade.

The personal conference facility could be of great help to functional heads as Reliance Communications feels that they are the biggest users of the video conferencing. “We create a virtual audio bridge for each user and a permanent IP number is assigned to this bridge. You can set up calls wherever you are,” said Ranade.

Another significant offering that Reliance Communications has in the pipeline is a set international toll-free numbers. “This can come in extremely handy when you have your business in several foreign locations,” said Ranade. This service provides international toll-free numbers across 62 countries.