Taming The Video Bandwidth Monster

A recent projection by Cisco predicts that video will account for more than 50% of Internet traffic by the end of next year and increase to 62% by the end of 2015. Whether you are a provider or a consumer of online video content, it’s a fact that you’ll be scrambling to keep up with the enormous bandwidth appetite of streaming and downloadable video.

Certainly, the rise of Netflix as an alternative or adjunct to Cable and Satellite TV is hastening the day when video packets will be the lion’s share of traffic on the Internet. The consumer is going through a revolution in what used to be called “TV” viewing. Now computers, tablets and smartphones can provide the television function. The difference is that these computing devices don’t have over the air tuners or connections to external set top boxes. What kind of sense does a set top box make for something like an iPad?

The design of TVs themselves has morphed into more of a digital media display with Internet connections as well as HDMI and the now ancient coaxial connector. Some models come equipped to directly access Netflix content and other Internet services. The LED backlit HDTV is starting to resemble a very large tablet device that mounts on the wall.

This technology shift has not been lost on the Satellite and Cable operators. They are moving to make their content available through the Internet as well as over their dedicated delivery mediums. The advantage of Internet delivery is that the service can be accessed on mobile devices as well as any type of fixed monitor with an Ethernet or WiFi connection. It also increases the load on the Internet infrastructure, including the core network, content delivery networks, and last mile access.

Businesses that don’t produce or distribute video content may look at this situation with amusement but not be the least bit concerned that it will affect them. Oh, but it will if it doesn’t already. The days of using the Internet to send emails or look things up through a Web search engine are headed for nostalgia. Much of the information worth accessing online is now in video form. That includes training materials, news reports, demonstrations, promotional brochures, tutorials and even press releases.

As a savvy company keeping up with the competition, your people need to be able to check out all the resources a vendor has to offer, monitor industry news, and participate in conferences. More and more those conferences are online video conferences and webinars. The high cost of travel, which looks to be on the rise again, is going to limit business trips to the most important meetings. Employees won’t be able to jet off to all the seminars and conventions they might like to. That doesn’t mean that you are stuck waiting for your email or Twitter client to ding in order to communicate. Most of what can be seen and done in person can be done with desktop video conferences, webinars, or telepresence.

Don’t forget that you will likely need to produce video content to keep up with your competitors. If they’re all over YouTube and you aren’t, potential customers are getting comfortably up to speed with someone else’s products and services.

Are you thinking this over and feeling bandwidth constrained? That’s probably true for a lot of companies. Things are moving fast and traditional telecom services are expensive and time consuming to upgrade. Don’t despair. There are many new options available that can eliminate your WAN bottlenecks at a lower cost that you expect. For instance, did you know that you can get 100 Mbps Fast Ethernet access over twisted pair copper or coaxial cable for a fraction of what you’d expect to pay for fiber services. Even fiber costs have plummeted, especially for Ethernet over Fiber that is affordable for 1 Gbps and even 10 Gbps for the most demanding applications.

If you are hitting the upper limit of your old T1 line or DS3 connection, now would be a good time to get a new set of competitive bandwidth prices targeted for your business location or locations. You can probably afford higher speed service than you think.

Telepresence as a Service

Just as telephone means sending your voice at a distance and television means pictures at a distance, telepresence means projecting yourself at a distance. It's not quite the Star Trek technology of beaming yourself physically from one place to another, but it might be close enough for business purposes. Now that Cisco and AT&T are teaming up to offer telepresence as a managed service rather than a capital expense, could the floodgates be opening for the virtual business call?

Telepresence has its roots in video conferencing. I remember using video conferencing in a large enterprise a decade ago. It wasn't pretty. The system was telephone based with a conference phone on long table and a video projector showing the feed from the far end on a pull-down screen. Images were fuzzy. To get everyone in the picture you had to widen the camera angle so far that it was hard to see facial expressions. Movement? Ha! I think we saw better full motion video from the Moon landings.

The real problem with telephone based video teleconferencing is that there's really not enough bandwidth to get the job done right. Even with 128 Kbps available through ISDN BRI phone service, video looks a long way from realistic. But now that broadband connectivity is ubiquitous, the door is open to high quality voice, video and data sharing. Cisco has been the big player in capitalizing on this new capability and at just the time it is needed most.

The best friend telepresence has is $100+ per barrel oil. High fuel prices are already stifling consumer travel. How much longer before they kill business travel? Not completely, of course. There are some situations where you positively have to meet in person to close the deal. But can you really afford to keep sending teams of a dozen participants to present a business case or attend a professional seminar? How about when you'd like to get together and hammer out some engineering details or contract clauses, but you're in New York and they're in Los Angeles and you'd really like to have things wrapped up by 5 PM? When it's now 2 PM?

What telepresence does is bridge the gap between physical locations for most needs. Cisco's approach has been to emulate the conference room table by dividing it half. Your half, on either end, is still a physical wood table. Their half, also on either end, is one or more high definition video screens with wide band audio. The scene is designed to fool the eye and ear into believing that your colleagues 3,000 miles away are right there on the other side of that conference table. As long as you don't try to pass a pot of coffee or plate of cookies over there, you might just be able to maintain that illusion indefinitely.

The beauty of a telepresence system is that goes beyond just shaving the cost of business travel. The additional leverage of being able to meet virtually at any time with participants from almost anywhere can more than offset the disappointment of not being able to get out of the office and go visiting, depending on how you feel about business travel. Another bonus you gain is all that downtime riding on buses and getting your shoes screened at the airport is recovered. If time is money, the value of additional productive hours may even exceed the bottom line on the expense report.

Up until now, there have been two giant hurdles to improved teleconferencing. One has been the inherent bandwidth limitations of trying to feed anything but phone calls down a phone line. That's been solved by broadband connections, either dedicated Internet VPN service or point to point private networking. Cisco estimates you need 1 to 5 Mbps to support their TelePresence system. Most larger companies have that now with T1 lines (1.5 Mbps) and DS3 connections (45 Mbps). Carrier Ethernet at 10, 100 and 1,000 Mbps makes the high definition conferencing option even more compelling.

The other hurdle has been cost. With specially designed and outfitted conference rooms needed to get the real value from Cisco's TelePresence, the capital expense has been appropriate only for the largest of corporations. Perhaps that barrier is also going to fall. Cisco's partner AT&T has the worldwide IP networking capability to provide the bandwidth. Cisco can provide the dedicated hardware. Companies can pay as they go using this managed service without having to risk huge amounts of construction capital when they're not so sure how much they'll really use it.

On a smaller scale, desktop and small meeting teleconferencing is proving popular for virtual workgroups, online enterprises, and sales training. Many of these are Web conferences with audio teleconferences supporting the slide shows and computer presentations. The cost is low enough that even the smallest companies can afford a service such as GoToMeeting or GoToWebinar.

Do you need help upgrading your audio and video conferencing equipment? How about improving your network WAN bandwidth to support communications with your employees, customers and suppliers? Being agile with your electronic conferencing capabilities offers the potential for faster response time, travel cost savings, and a greener approach to running your business.

Ultra Conference Dual Conference Calling Solution

Once you develop a need for teleconferences that go beyond small groups of people huddling around speakerphones at a couple of locations, you get interested in conference calling solutions. While some PBX systems offer conference bridges that can join multiple phones, an outsourced conferencing solution can allow dozens or even hundreds of diversely located participants to be part of the same call.

Ultra Conference is an enterprise grade conferencing solution that is inexpensive enough to use for all sorts of teleconferencing applications. Even more versatile is the choice you get between fixed price and per-minute charges.

One popular use for Ultra Conference is training calls. The company provides a moderator and trainers or guest experts. Participants are given a phone number and PIN code to dial at a pre-scheduled time. No-one has to be located at a "conferencing center." Any phone will do. The moderator controls the session and can choose to let everyone speak at will, or enter a lecture mode that allows only certain parties to talk. Others can raise a virtual hand to speak by pushing a button on their dialpad. The entire call can be recorded for later reference or even to post on a website for downloading by those who missed the call.

Another popular use for teleconferences is shareholder calls which can include question and answer sessions. These can possibly involve a hundred or more participants. Ultra Conference scales easily to handle this many callers. You also have the option to have an UltraConference operator moderate the call or even call your participants when it's time for the telecon.

I know what you're thinking. A service like this must be pretty pricey. Would you be surprised to know that there are no sign-up fees, no monthly service fees and no contracts involved? You pay as you go, which makes UltraConference practical for even very small or virtual companies.

There are two plans available. With the per-minute plan, you pay 7.9 cents per minute per participant on domestic calls. Participants dial a toll free access number to join the call. With the flat rate plan, you pay a monthly fee based on the number of lines you want to reserve. It starts at $39/month for 5 lines and gets cheaper per line as the quantity of lines goes up. You can use the lines for as many conference calls in a month as you desire. In the flat rate plan, participants dial an Atlanta phone number and pay for the call themselves. Your cost besides the monthly line rental is 3.9 cents per minute long distance charge per participant.

Ah, which to chose, which to choose? Don't strain your brain over this. Use the handy comparison calculator to see which plan is the most cost effective for your particular needs. Enter the number of participants, average length of conference, and number of conferences per month. Then click the "calculate now" button and you'll have your answer. This will also help you compare the cost of UltraConference with the conferencing solution you are using now. If you've been paying a bundle to host company telecons, you might switch to saving a bundle with UltraConference.