AT&T, top US phone company and network equipment maker Cisco Systems Inc together announced that they will start selling a top-end video conferencing system to boost sales to multinational corporate clients.

Both the companies said that they will start selling the joint service in the second half of 2008 in 23 countries, and expand it to more countries in 2009. It will be sold as a corporate telecommunications service which will include help and on-site equipment maintenance, rather than a one-off equipment sale.

Cisco also came up with a video conferencing system called TelPresence in 2006 which featured life-size, high-definition screens and easy-to-use dial-in features. The Telepresence 3000,having three high-definition screens was initially priced at $299,000 per unit.