Video conferencing has had many false dawns, but perhaps something is changing. Some of the technology perceptions that have affected its adoption for a long time still persist. There are concerns about interoperability between different vendors’ products, the quality of the sound and video, the communications costs and impact on network bandwidth. Most of these concerns are no longer valid, yet something stills seems to be holding adoption back.
In part, the industry has addressed interoperability issues through standards, but also there has been some consolidation amongst suppliers and a recognition that video is not a standalone conferencing system, but part of a larger communications infrastructure.
In the recent years, most of the specialist video conferencing suppliers have recognised the need for a range of products from desktop to dedicated whole room systems for different types of use, and that these should all integrate together and with other companies products as part of a complete video system.
Quality has improved a lot, with cheap low-end cameras on laptops capable of delivering high definition images, and tele-presence systems capable of not only multi-screen high definition images, but directional sound and eye contact.
The highest quality systems do have an impact on networks, requiring high and sometimes dedicated bandwidth, but even moderate home broadband connections are now more than enough for reasonable quality video communications.
With a sorting out of the technology issues, the user experience has been massively improved. The initiation, control and operation of visual communications no longer needs a resident engineer or expert. Software has improved and by and large allowed video to be unified with other forms of communications.
Most operators, Internet service providers and network managers would say that there has been a big uptick in the amount of video traffic on their networks, but the overwhelming percentage of this is one way, media consumption i.e. YouTube, iPlayer and so on.
So why are there still only a few groups of users for two-way or more communications?
Acceptance of the experience and appreciation of its value seem to be at the heart of the issue. It is no longer difficult or necessarily expensive, but what is missing is a killer application need to justify its regular use.
The mobile industry thought it had found it with personal mobile video calling. It is true that the fixed line telephony industry has had a number of abortive attempts with personal video telephony from the AT&T Picturephones onwards, but with the advent of their high bandwidth 3G networks, mobile operators finally thought they could sell video calling on the move. It was heavily promoted when the new generation of devices and networks first appeared, but bombed, and despite further marketing pushes, most people are more likely to see a meteor than a person making a video call on their mobile.
Many marketing campaigns promoting the use of video have focussed on what it takes away. There is no need to travel, damage the environment, waste time or meet face to face. The key question when bringing video into the communication should be ‘what does it add?’
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