RIYADH, SAUDI ARABIA--(Marketwire - July 13, 2011) - Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) -- Mobily, the official brand name of Etihad Etisalat and a leading mobile and data service provider in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, today unveiled the first public Cisco TelePresence Suites® venue in the Kingdom. The suite is centrally located in Riyadh city at the Mobily headquarters adjacent to Kingdom Tower.

Mobily's Cisco TelePresence Suite will connect 32 worldwide business cities across five continents with its partner Tata Communication and other partner networks. The network reach makes Cisco TelePresence® technology a truly global collaboration tool.

Highlights / Key Facts

The new Mobily TelePresence facility will enable Mobily's customers to minimize their travel time and expenses by delivering a live, immersive, face-to-face experience via the network.

Cisco TelePresence technology allows users to enjoy real-time communication and to collaborate with colleagues, customers and partners even if they are in a different city. Participants sit at a conference table in the Cisco TelePresence room and connect to the other participants with a simple phone call. The setup of the rooms allows participants to feel as if they are sitting across a table, in a life-size meeting room.

Customers will be able to purchase meeting slots in the Mobily TelePresence room, in advance, on an hourly or daily basis through Mobily interactive 24-hour online booking system with its partner Tata Communication.

The rooms have been installed with a Cisco TelePresence System 3010, which allows up to six people to connect simultaneously across a maximum of 48 locations. It comprises three 65-inch plasma screens and a specially designed physical table that sits six participants on each side of the virtual table. It also features an additional LCD display for sharing rich-media content and other data using simple collaboration functionality as well as integrated cameras, lights and microphones so that speakers use less power.

The 'real life' meeting experience provided by Cisco TelePresence technology is delivered through ultra-high-resolution video that reveals subtle facial expressions conveying nonverbal reactions. Spatial audio allows the transmission of every nuance of the conversation and participants to interact as they would in person.

The Mobily public TelePresence solution will help save time and costs as well as boost productivity by reducing or eliminating the need to travel, thereby facilitating a 'greener' environment by reducing the carbon footprint. It also offers increased flexibility to Mobily customers in the Kingdom, who will be able to conduct business meetings or sensitive negotiations.

The Mobily TelePresence suite in Riyadh will be connected to a number of other rooms around the globe as a Global Meeting Exchange. The Mobily Exchange will enable business-to-business meetings between any public rooms or customer-owned private rooms to communicate with each other.

Executive quotes:

Khaled AlKaf, CEO, Mobily
"We are proud to pioneer this unique technology to businesses in Saudi Arabia in a climate, where our customers across Saudi are looking at better ways to conduct business, keep a firm control on costs, and get more productivity. Mobily is the only company in the Kingdom that currently has the fiber infrastructure to offer Cisco TelePresence services cost-effectively. Our new Cisco TelePresence solution provides a compelling business case to save cost and time, as well as being environmentally friendly. Our goal is to continue to evolve our meeting offerings to address the needs of businesses and consumers in Saudi. Our collaboration with Cisco will enable us to do just that."

Wayne Fullerton, managing director for Cisco in Saudi Arabia.
"Our goal is to empower customers through technology, and innovations like Cisco TelePresence technology deliver just this. Our collaboration with Mobily to launch the first public Cisco TelePresence room in the Kingdom represents a truly transformational landmark project for Cisco in Saudi Arabia. This is one of the many ways Cisco contributes to the 'going green' revolution, a global effort to save our environment for future generations. We look forward to working with Mobily to deploy Cisco TelePresence rooms in many more locations throughout the Kingdom."

Links / URLs:

For more details about Public Cisco TelePresence visit: http://www.cisco.com/en/US/solutions/ns669/public_telepresence.html

Emerging Markets RSS Feed: http://newsroom.cisco.com/data/syndication/rss2/EmergingMarkets.xml

Middle East News: http://www.cisco.com/web/ME/about/news/index.html

For more information visit: www.mobily.com.sa/telepresence
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