What's Next for Video Conferences

Curt Harler

Although prices continue to drop, technical and social obstacles must still be addressed before desktop videoconferencing becomes as common an application as making a telephone call. Products that comply with the H.323 standard for audio/videoconferencing over intranets and packet-switched networks will appear this year. With reduced prices and the arrival of this first wave of H.323-based LAN/WAN products, companies will test and evaluate how desktop videoconferencing can improve their business, according to analysts and vendors.

If price was a major obstacle in 1996, look again. For example, Philips' H.323-compliant EasyCam (for Pentium PCs with a 33.6-Kbps modem) costs $399, compared to $499 last year. EasyCam ((408) 453-7373; http://www.pps.philips.com ) bundles a color desktop camera, an audio/video capture board, and CuSeeMe software for IP-based videoconferencing. H.320-compliant solutions for ISDN videoconferencing such as PictureTel's $1495 Live200p ((508) 292-5000; http://www.picturetel.com ) and Vcon's $1895 Armada Cruiser 150 ((972) 735-9001; http://www.vcon.co.il ) cost about $1000 less than last year. Microsoft plans to give away its IP-based NetMeeting 2.0 audio/vid eoconferencing software that's currently in beta testing. Also, entry-level H.324-compliant hardware/software packages for plain old telephone service (POTS) videoconferencing can cost $250 or less.

However, lowered prices for the desktop hardware and software won't guarantee widespread adoption, says Mike Clifford, vice president of sales for VCon, which expects to release a low-cost H.323 package this year. "Connectivity is a big issue," says Clifford. For H.323-based conferencing to become practical in business, many networks will need to be upgraded for greater throughput, support for quality of service (in routers), and gateways between the LAN and WAN.

H.323/H.320 gateways, which should soon be available from companies such as RADVision ((201) 529-4300; http://www.radvision.com ) and VideoServer ((617) 229-2000; http://www.videoserver.com ), extend your LAN videoconferencing to work with H.320 solutions. However, these gateways will be relatively expensive. For example, RADVision's L2W-323 (which handles up to four concurrent calls) H.323/H.320 gateway will cost $5950.

As more businesses use videoconferencing, the need for gateways and multipoint control units (MCUs) will increase. "Multipoint is a natural extension of the typical business meeting, bringing many participants together to make a decision," says Art Zeile, vice president of sales and marketing at Link-VTC ((303) 516-6103; http://www.li nkvtc.com ), which offers multiple-site videoconferencing services. Businesses that find current prices for MCUs and gateways too expensive may want to outsource services to companies such as Link-VTC, MCI, AT&T, or Sprint.

Desktop videoconferencing requires managers to consider numerous issues, ranging from time and expense in upgrading desktop PCs to effect on LAN performance, according to Christine Perey, principal for the Placerville, CA-based videoconferencing consultancy Perey Communications ((916) 621-0468). "But the technical issues, while not insignificant, are not the biggest issues," she says. "The big issue is human."

Videoconferencing today is often perceived as a WAN application, one that can save the time and cost of a meeting in another city. Yet videoconferencing over the LAN confers advantages even for employees who are working in the same building or campus, Perey says. With desktop videoconferencing, for example, participants can "meet" while having access to all their PCs' resources as they collaborate via application sharing, without having to reserve a room. In today's business culture, however, having an in-house meeting usually means leaving your office and PC and walking to a meeting room.

One trend that may help change the perception of where meetings are held is if inexpensive H.323-over-Internet or H.324 packages for analog phone lines become popular among consumers. Consumer-level products that deliver only 3- to 4-frame-per-second video will not provide the quality that many businesses will require, but these entry-level products could promote videoconferencing's overall acceptance in society. As social, economic, and technical barriers come down, videoconferencing at the desktop may finally achieve mass-market acceptance in the next two or three years.