BOGOTA, Colombia, March 3, 2010 – Colombian President Alvaro Uribe Vélez and Minister of Defense Gabriel Silva Luján today inaugurated the first Cisco TelePresence^TM rooms implemented by the Colombian government, with a virtual meeting between the presidential Casa de Nariño and the Ministry of Defense in Bogotá.

The Cisco TelePresence rooms will allow government officials to meet face to face while avoiding transportation delays, and are designed to foster a rapid and more effective decision-making process in government. 

The equipment in the Casa de Nariño and the Ministry of Defense is the Cisco TelePresence System 3000, a three-screen virtual meeting room that combines real-time video, audio and interactive technologies to give people in distributed locations a wide variety of face-to-face collaboration experiences. Users experience a feeling of being in the same room with other participants even when the distances between them are thousands of kilometers.

Executive Quotes:

• Colombian President Álvaro Uribe Vélez

"I would like to have this technology solution in all government departments as it could bring huge benefits in terms of productivity gains, travel reduction and allow us to decrease costs. The adoption of this technology is a crucial step and in name of the Colombian Government we thank Cisco."

• John Chambers, chairman and CEO, Cisco

"I want to congratulate President Uribe's government and the private sector for their recognition of the role that the network and video will play in improving communications, standards of living for citizens and increasing Colombia's global competitiveness. Colombia has had a long history of economic success that has been underpinned by a focus on public private partnerships. This collaborative approach is an example of the leadership that Colombia is showing to the rest of the world."

Key Facts:

• Through the Cisco TelePresence system, the president of Colombia and the minister of defense can have face-to-face meetings at the touch of a button without the need to travel, helping facilitate the collaboration, productivity and decision making of both institutions.
• The Cisco TelePresence solution re-creates an in-person meeting by using three 65-inch plasma screens with 1080p resolution to display life-size images of the participants. Three high-resolution cameras in each room allow everyone to clearly see the facial expressions and gestures across the "virtual table."
• The Cisco TelePresence system uses high-quality spatial audio, which allows conversations to be conducted in a natural fashion.
• All Cisco TelePresence meetings will be encrypted with a highly secure system that prevents the capture of audio, data and video by third parties.
• The Colombian government's Cisco TelePresence system will use a dedicated 20-megabits-per-second connection from Telefónica.
• In the future, the Cisco TelePresence rooms from the presidential palace and the Ministry of Defense will interoperate with any standards-based video conferencing system.