Climate Action 2008-2009

When businesses calculate
their carbon footprints, the key
components are usually energy
consumption and transportation. For
multinational companies with offices
around the world, the international
travel component can be particularly
high. Consider this – the average
CO 2
emissions for a person living in
the UK is 8.8 tons per year. A single
return flight between London and
New York itself emits 1.4 tons of CO 2
.
16 per cent of an average annual
total can be taken up in just a single
relatively short intercontinental
flight. For companies that have major
sites across multiple continents,
the environmental impact of their
executives’ business travel is even
more dramatic.
As such, for companies looking to
reduce their carbon emissions, it
becomes a priority to find alternatives
to long-haul flights, and collaboration
technologies have certainly gone
some ways to enabling more effective
group work. Audio conferencing, web
conferencing, and instant messaging
all help people work better together
from their respective locations.
The arrival of telepresence technology
takes collaboration across dispersed
geographies to a whole new level.
Telepresence is high-definition
immersive conferencing with brilliant
audio quality.
“The people at the other end look
life-sized, there’s no delay or distortion
in the sound of their voice and you
really feel like you are speaking to
them in person,” says Peter Quinlan,
Director of Managed Telepresence
Services at Tata Communications.
Fulfilling the potential of video
conferencing, participants in a
telepresence session see and
hear their counterparts like they
were in the same room, making
the experience very positive and
productive. Participants can focus
fully on the discussion or work at
hand rather than be distracted by any
challenges with the technology – like
delays, blurred visuals and dropped
sound. They can also employ their
whole body language to get their
message across, and communication
is so much more natural and as a
result, effective.
Tata Communications is leading the
field by offering a comprehensive
managed Telepresence service
and opening the first public
Telepresence rooms to businesses
across the world. This means that
Tata Communications can provide
turnkey Telepresence facilities to
enterprises at their headquarters
and other major locations. Then
the public Telepresence rooms
enable their smaller sites, partners,
suppliers and customers to access
this groundbreaking service – at an
affordable, pay-per-use hourly rate.
The more people are connected to
Telepresence, the more valuable the
service is to the company.
Tata Communications’ complete
portfolio of Telepresence network and
managed services offers companies
a reliable, highly secure and easy-touse
facility. Tata Communications’
global network ensure robust and
optimum quality connectivity. The
costs of implementation are lowered