BellSouth has added Cisco Systems’ media conferencing capabilities to its premises-based managed VoIP offering, the company announced today.

The service is available through BellSouth territory and targets mid-sized to large businesses that want to use integrated voice, video and Web conferencing to improve communications and worker productivity, according to Kevin Seim, senior marketing manager for BellSouth Business.

“When you look at the marketplace, collaboration and conference are quickly rising to the top of the list as customer requirements for VoIP,” he said. “We are getting beyond the centralized benefits of IP telephony.” Businesses are now looking to make their knowledge workers more productive, and easy-to-use conferencing is part of that, he said. It will also reduce travel costs.

The service is built on the Cisco MeetingPlace platform, which is part of the vendor’s IP Communications System.

“The server sits on the customer premises, behind the customer’s firewall,” Seim said. “It can be integrated at the desktop with [Microsoft] Outlook, and with Cisco’s IP phones.”

The conferencing service enables point and click conference set-up that is more secure than dial-in voice conferencing. The service itself is complex to install, monitor and manage, which is where BellSouth Business provides the expertise. BellSouth had to invest heavily in equipment and training to offer the service, Seim said, including earning Rich Media Communications Advanced Technology Provider status from Cisco.

“This is more complex than your average IT staff would handle,” he said. “It is a highly complex product.”

BellSouth stands to convert more business customers to VoIP and to sell more bandwidth as new customers adopt the conferencing service, Seim said.

“We see this as helping people over the fence to VoIP,” he said. “VoIP has become an advanced technology platform onto which we can layer advanced applications. You’ll be seeing more announcements from us along these lines after the first of the year.”