Ericsson and Polycom (News - Alert) announced at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona a collaboration of an integrated end-to-end solution for hosted telepresence services. The new collaboration will enable telecom operators to deliver affordable, high-definition visual communications services to businesses and consumers.

In a release, Joe Burton, chief technology and strategy officer for Polycom said that that "Availability of visual communications as an affordable, reliable and high-quality service through telecom operators will help usher in global, mainstream adoption. Furthering our UC Everywhere and cloud strategies, Polycom is excited to collaborate with Ericsson around standards-based solutions with the open interoperability needed to easily connect people across devices and networks."

The collaboration between Polycom and Ericsson is driven by dispersed work forces, globalization, travel restrictions, and green workplaces. The collaboration is a response to the rising adoption rates and increasing customer demand across enterprises of all size, and will extend visual communications as a truly global mass market service. The new solutions which are being developed will be based on the standardized IMS technology, the same underlying technology used by telecom operators all across the world.

Magnus Furustam (News - Alert), vice president and head of core and IMS at Ericsson said that "Ericsson believes in visual communications. The preview at the Mobile World Congress is a first significant proof point of Ericsson and Polycom cooperation to create an interoperable end-to-end solution for mass market deployment, enabling telecom operators to offer network-based video services to business users and consumers."