Cisco's TelePresence: not yet virtual reality

Stuart Corner
Tuesday, 24 October 2006 09:38

Opinion and Analysis

The absence of any sense of a screen was a big contributor to this illusion. The other two factors were very high definition video and smart audio technology so that when one woman got up and walked around behind the other talking as she went the sound of her voice followed her precisely.

It was astonishing. And it was more than a laboratory demonstration. The facility and its European twin are available for, and used by France Telecom's customers quite frequently. But of course these installations won't be popping up in boardrooms for a while yet. The cost of the equipment probably could not be justified and the bandwidth certainly not. How much bandwidth? The FT people weren't saying, except to admit it was an awful lot.

Neither has Cisco indicated, so far as I am aware, how much bandwidth is needed to run its TelePresence system. But the Cisco system lives up to its promises this will be its main achievement: working reliably over the sort of global IP-MPLS network now routinely deployed by multinational corporations without them, or the supplying carriers having to make massive investments in upgrades that render the system economically unattractive.

It could well be the VoIP scenario revisited. In the early days of enterprise IP telephony enterprises were sold on the benefits of VoIP only to discover they had to make significant investments upgrading their data networks to reliably carry their voice traffic.

Cisco's TelePresence system will undoubtedly be attractive but the proof of the pudding wil be when it can secure endorsements from some significant customers.