Regus will rent out the suites for about US$400 an hour to enterprises that need to bring widely dispersed people together but don't want to fly them around the world. The deal, worth more than $45 million over five years, involves Polycom equipment and Cable&Wireless network infrastructure. The first suite is set to open in London this summer, Regus CEO Mark Dixon said.

The deal came in the aftermath of a high-profile stumble for Cisco's TelePresence Meeting system. Launched in late 2006, it has been the flagship of the company's push for more video in enterprises and homes. When it hit the market with a price tag of $598,000 for two rooms, Cisco's product claimed a more lifelike experience than traditional videoconferencing and put the spotlight on high-definition video meeting systems. Generically called telepresence, the new meeting technology typically uses large, high-definition displays and audio systems to simulate a real meeting.

In March 2007, just months after the system was introduced, Cisco announced that Regus would set up TelePresence suites in 50 locations around the world. Regus clients and the public would rent these rooms for virtual meetings among the Regus sites or between those suites and other Cisco TelePresence systems. But the suites were never set up. Cisco's technology ended up being too hard to implement, and Regus was concerned about interoperability with other vendors' videoconferencing and telepresence systems.

"It was not possible to execute, in terms of the equipment," Dixon said. "Maybe too early stage, I don't know." There were "technical hitches and all kinds of hitches," Dixon said, without going into detail.

"For us, it's ease of operation," Dixon said. "We're a normal company. If we have things that are too complicated to execute on and to implement, then in a way, that defeats the object of why you're doing what you're doing. It's to simplify your life, not to make it more complicated."