Tely Labs racked up a strategic investment that totaled $15 million, with Comcast Ventures and Rogers Ventures both taking part in the investment round.

Tely Labs started out two years ago with a video conferencing platform that was designed to work on TVs. Small- and medium-size business (SMB) owners started using the company’s Tely Lab HD camera with Skype as a way of enabling a cheap video conferencing service.

Recognizing the opportunity to provide a more robust service and platform to SMBs, Tely Labs has come up with its new telyHD Business Edition, which includes better quality video and the ability to have multi-person video sharing.

“Our goal is to bring full-featured, high-quality video conferencing to small and medium business users that have been priced out of the market and not able to benefit from its many business advantages," said Sreekanth Ravi, CEO of Tely Labs. "Offering more than an amazing price, telyHD BE maximizes the power and expandability of the Android platform and utilizes our proprietary VMM technology to deliver a high-quality video and audio experience."

For about $500 per location, businesses can connect up to six offices simultaneously in a multi-party video call with real-time, high-quality video and audio, while simultaneously sharing desktops and collaborating on documents.

The service also features a Windows app that enables wireless desktop sharing and document collaboration, making it easy to share Microsoft Office documents, Adobe PDFs and Web pages while on a multi-party video call. It’s also Skype-certified, so any Skype user on any Skype-enabled device can be a participant in a point-to-point or multi-party call.

"The disruptive technologies in Tely Labs' innovative video conferencing system finally put enterprise-class video quality and features in the hands of small and medium businesses at a fraction of the current cost," said Louis Toth, managing director of Comcast Ventures. "TelyHD BE is exceptionally well-positioned to capitalize on the sizable market opportunity for affordable video conferencing solutions, bringing advanced capabilities and simplicity to SMBs. We look forward to helping Tely Labs drive innovation in this fast-growing segment of video conferencing."

Comcast has enabled an HD video conferencing service with Skype [1] for its residential customers using Technicolor devices [2].