Will a $1,000 Price Be the Tipping Point That Thrusts Video Conferencing into the Mainstream?

Ken Landoline

Summary Bullets:

• Of the more than 60 million conference rooms in the world, it is estimated that fewer than 5% are equipped to provide business-quality video conferencing.
• High cost, interoperability issues, complex set-up requirements and poor video quality have been major deterrents to the widespread use of video conferencing.

It was just a few years ago that several global telecommunications equipment providers were proclaiming video to be the key element of enterprise telecommunications expenditure growth that would fuel the marketplace through the next decade.  Back then, the emphasis seemed to be on specialized video conferencing rooms with large surround screens that provided an ‘immersive telepresence’ video experience simulating life-size, face-to-face meetings of small groups of individuals.  The problem was that these systems cost in excess of $250,000 when the video technology, room setting and acoustics were included.  My immediate thought when initially introduced to these large room settings was that the market was limited to a very small segment of the enterprise marketplace.  More precisely, while video was still an untapped source of market stimulation, these systems were not simple enough, open enough or inexpensive enough to create that hockey-stick shaped upturn in the market demand that everyone was hoping to see.