Next week I'm off to Eibsee, Germany for IMTC Forum 2005, the annual conference of the International Multimedia Telecommunications Consortium, where I've been invited to give the Thursday morning keynote address. If you're involved in video telephony you already know the IMTC. It's the major international trade association for any kind of rich media telecom and the organizing body for the important interoperability workshops.
I've been peripherally involved in video telephony since the early 1990s, through friendships with people at PictureTel and, later, as a supplier to Video Server Inc. I've also used room conferencing for business meetings since 1992. But I have to say, the video telephony market never looked that interesting. If anything, for business conferences I want good voice quality first, document sharing second, with a view of someone's face ranking a distant third. So what's changed?
Just over four years ago, we got involved in video technology in support of NTT DoCoMo's FOMA 3G mobile service in Japan. At first it was just to support some really important customers in Japan, but then we realized that mobile video telephony enabled some significantly different applications which had the potential to drive substantial growth. And indeed the business opportunity has spread to Korea, to Europe, and globally. So I've been paying a lot of attention in recent years.
Today there are new trends in VoIP and other adjacent markets which, combined with camera phones, mobility and broadband access, could lead to a disruptive new application that drives rapid adoption of multimedia telecom. The next 2-3 years look very interesting. But that's the subject of my talk next Thursday, so I'll hold off further discussion until then.
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