RingCentral, a cloud-based business communications provider, announced it will offer a multi-point HD video conferencing and web sharing app built for smartphones, tablets and computers as part of its RingCentral Meetings offer. With this latest release, RingCentral Meetings will now be included in all RingCentral Office Editions: Standard, Premium and Enterprise—with package options varying by the number of attendees.
RingCentral Meetings offers support for iOS and Android smartphones and tablets, PCs and Macs. The Multi-point HD Video Conferencing service offers support for up to 50 participants and active speaker spotlight, interactive screen sharing, integrated audio conferencing, meeting management, and other features.
Commenting on the release in statement, David Berman, President of RingCentral said, “In today’s dynamic work environment, with mobile employees and distributed workforces across locations, employees need to stay connected and collaborate in real-time to achieve optimal business results.”
In other news, AT&T announced that beginning May 23, 2014 it will introduce High Definition (HD) Voice on an all-IP, Voice Over LTE (VoLTE) network in select markets. HD Voice from AT&T will initially be provided Samsung Galaxy S®4 mini, with more devices to come. Initially, HD Voice from AT&T will be available in select areas in Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota and Wisconsin, and will continue to expand on a market-by-market basis.
Our observations on VoLTE: We’ve been predicting VoLTE deployments for three years now, and while the AT&T scope is admittedly limited, it’s nice for us to finally some more commercial VoLTE deployments. But personal predictions aside, this is an important move for AT&T as it makes its eventual transition to a fully VoIP network that will replace the PSTN (something we covered in a previous post). And as AT&T, along with other operators, make the transition to VoLTE using their 4G-LTE networks, they can also free valuable spectrum that is currently being used for 3G voice calls.