Resources
Video conferencing goes mainstream
By Nick Easen for CNN
(CNN) --Video conferencing has finally come of age, making inroads into business and linking a growing number of offices worldwide, investment figures suggest.
Improved cheaper connections mean live video and audio feeds, real time Web-based screen-sharing and data swaps.
"Last year annual spending on video conferencing was estimated to be $4.3 billion. By 2005, it is projected to grow to $7.7 billion," Wendy Wong of communication company Polycom told CNN.
"Dispersed work groups have increased by 600 percent and executives attend an average of 60 meetings per month -- the market is ripe for video-conferencing."
Many new offices have video conferencing facilities as standard while more hotels are kitting out conference rooms.
Terrorist attacks, the SARS health epidemic and a downturn in the world economy all helped reduce business travel and increase demand for video conferencing.
This has been underlined by lower prices for high-speed broadband and ISDN connections, as well as falling prices for video conferencing hardware.
"In seven to 10 years video traffic on the Internet will exceed data and voice traffic combined," Bob Metcalfe, founder of 3COM, told Forbes magazine earlier this year.
But some people still have bad memories of video conferencing when grainy or frozen pictures and poor sound quality were the norm.
Some of the major providers -- Polycom, Tandberg and Sony -- say these days are long gone and units now deliver near CD-quality audio and TV-quality video.
But not everyone is convinced.
"Video conferencing is still like an upgraded conference call -- normal but interrupted voice is not a natural environment," says Kyle Davies of American Express Corporate Travel.
"It's still not cheap and you can only do it for a small amount of time and without travel it is still difficult to touch the clients and regional staff."