One of the speakers at Spring VON this morning was Zohar Zisapel, Chairman of the Board of RAD Datacom talking about video conferencing. Since NMS Communications is heavily involved in mobile video and we sometimes see RADVision as a competitor, I had to attend. Also I see video conferencing as the least important of the many uses of video, so I was curious if he was still wedded to conventional video conferencing. Apparently yes ...
So what were his points? Early in the presentation he admitted “Traditional room meeting video conferencing is a mediocre compromise.” He discussed telepresence and admitted that, while it was a bit better, it was extremely expensive. And at one point point he said "voice is the main event, but video helps..."
He also had a side rave on voice quality, asking "why don't 3G operators use their new networks to improve the quality of voice?" I couldn't agree more.
But having said all that, he went on to claim that mobile video conferencing (i.e. two-way video conversation) was going to be important — the "limitations," i.e. price, bandwidth, complexity, proliferation of standards, were fading away.
He had only a passing allusion to YouTube and user created content, and no focus on the one form of live video that seems to matter to most people. I refer of course to video sharing — see-what-I-see video using two-way audio and one-way video. This is the most popular use for mobile video telephony. Whether there is a two-way video stream or not, what counts is a one-way video stream from someone actively wielding a camera on behalf of one or more observers — "Look mom, I'm climbing Mt. Fuji" or "Look Grandma, Susie's starting to walk." If it's not viewed live, we call it user created content. Either way, this is the big opportunity in mobile video.
Even with mobile camera phones, conventional "video conferencing" is still a mediocre compromise and likely to remain so until such time as we get 3D holographic virtual presence (perhaps 2015? or 2018?). :-)
I recently started working with ACN Telecommunications and this post has given me so much enthusiam for ACN. This company is offering these services and I'm in the perfect position to profit off of this transfer of wealth... thanks for the post!
Posted by: Patrick McIntyre | April 13, 2007 at 01:17 AM
Caution, Patrick: ACN is a multi-level marketing organization that happens to resell telecom services. You may or may not make money working for that kind of organization, but either way it's likely to be independent of the thoughts expressed in my post. :)
Posted by: brough | April 15, 2007 at 02:38 PM
That's really a smart and quick sloution for video conferencing, without much efforts and time.
http://www.sony-conferencing.com/
Posted by: Steve M | August 27, 2007 at 01:00 AM