In the context of a briefing with Cisco regarding their FTTH strategy, I was invited at a Telepresence conference last week. Participants were spread around Europe, with one in the UK, one in Vienna and one in Munich. There were a couple of my colleagues from the US too, but unfortunately they could not make it to a telepresence facility, so they were just webexing into the conference.
Any way, I'd been waiting to try this out for a good while, and all I can say is that Telepresence did not dissappoint. For those who have never seen the system, it looks like half of a conference table with microphones embedded in the tables themselves; the other half of the table is covered by three large flat screens that follow a symmetric curve to that of the table. There's a video projecter embedded in the lower end of the table so that materials projected a shown below the screens so as not to degrade the interactive magic of the telepresence itself (see picture).
The sensation you get from doing a meeting in these surroundings is just as good as the real thing. Sounds corny, I know, but it's not. It really is that impressive. The image quality is superb, the sound is directed, so your brain immediately knows who's talking just by their position in the room. After less than a minute of discussion, you feel nearly like the people are in the room with you.
There was only one thing that I felt wasn't quite perfect. When you have participants in different location, the solution does its best to recreate a virtual set-up, but it doesn't totally succeed. The net effect is that eye contact is sometimes a little off, and that's weird. It's about the only thing that can pull you out of the "magic" for an instant. And I'm pretty sure they're working at fixing that too, assuming technology can fix it.
I do a lot of audio-conferencing in this job and have had my fair share of video conferencing too, and I always felt the distance. Your mind kinda wanders, inevitably. Not so with this solution. I haven't tried any of Cisco's competitor's products (not even sure exactly who they are...) and maybe they're just as good, but I can only vouch for this one and it really is pure genius. Before I started my own conference, I chatted with the guy who had the room booked before me, and he told me that ever since introducing this solution internally (Cisco have over 150 rooms installed worldwide for their own needs) Cisco's travel budget went down by 25% year on year. Imagine the savings!
And that brings us back to fiber. I don't know what bandwidth the telepresence solution requires, but my bet is a lot. And it requires symmetry, inevitably. If this type of solution (but Cisco or others) is to spread around large businesses and then smaller ones, businesses have to be connected to fiber. I can just see a tipping point in telepresence like solutions (assuming they're all interoperable, fingers crossed...) where businesses that wouldn't have one would really be at a disadvantage...
I can but hope!
