Nortel this week said professional services firm Deloitte has selected it to provide global telepresence, video conferencing and associated multimedia services.

Under a managed services agreement with Nortel, Deloitte and as many as 130 member firm locations will obtain the services. The arrangement was prompted by rising fuel prices, airfares and environmental sensitivity, Nortel says.

A company spending as much as $23 million annually on travel can use telepresence to recover as many as 385,000 hours of lost productivity, reduce its carbon footprint by as much as 4,200 tons and save as much as $7 million, Nortel says. Citing data from Nemertes Research, Nortel says enterprises could cover the cost of multiple, dedicated, high-end telepresence facilities and managed telepresence services with only a 2% to 3% reduction in international travel. (Compare collaboration products.)

Nortel will provision the services from Multimedia Network Operations Centers deployed globally. The services include implementation, network monitoring and 24/7 support.

Nortel's telepresence services include systems from multiple equipment suppliers, most notably Polycom and Tandberg, with which Nortel has achieved global telepresence service certification .