There are many types of teleconferencing. The oldest, simplest, and cheapest type of teleconferencing is a conference phone call. Advances in teleconferencing are proceeding in two directions. One advance is in teleconferencing taking place in special teleconferencing rooms or with special equipment. Another are advances in teleconferencing in computer networks.
Let us first consider special teleconferencing rooms or equipment. In this approach a more advanced type is voice and slides, and the most advanced type is video teleconferencing with dynamic video, voice, and data. In 1982 ARCO spent $20Mfor a teleconferencing system because the chairman traveled 600 to 700 miles everyday for the past 35 years. ARCO's system includes one TV screen for pictures and one for data (Alaska to LA) and they also plan to expand network and transmit data from seismic tests. Video teleconferencing is growing at 20 to 40%a year. With increased long distance communication competition through the creation of fiber optic networks with tremendous excess capacity rates should continue a downward trend. As the demand for teleconferencing services increases, producers obtain economies of scale in production. For example, to reduce the cost of full video conferences, one company has set up a video conference 'coop' to sell the unused time at facilities set up by corporations. Later, Aetna set up video conference rooms to link its corporate center with its data processing center which were 15 miles away. It cost $250,000 to build and cost $250/hr to operate. Before Aetna set up this system, 500 programmers met 3000 times a month with managers in the headquarters. Aetna has installed video conference rooms in its Chicago, San Francisco and Dallas offices. By 1986, a typical video conference rooms center cost more than $200,000. A year later the cost fell to $120,000 and by 1989 to $60,000. The cost is projected to be below $15,000 by the end of 1993. At the same time the cost of phone lines for video conference rooms has fallen from $1600to less than $20per hour.
A form of teleconferencing in computer networks is collaberative computing. Lotus notes is an example of software which allows groups to work together. You should in the next few years expect a large number of software packages which allow groups of people at remote personal computer locations to exchange text, data and still images. PC manufacturers are now creating PCs which incorporate a videocam for videoconferencing through computer networks. Such videoconferencing will become commonplace in LANs before WANs. This may not become commonplace in WANs until the capacity of the phone system expands to cheaply handle desktop videoconferencing.
Low cost video teleconferening offers businesses many advantages. Teleconferences generally can be set much more quickly than business meetings involving people at large distances. In addition, teleconferencing is cheaper than travel. Finally executives are more effective not have to work in airplanes and hotel rooms. A success story with teleconferencing is M/A Com. Teleconferencing is used to manage 26 companies. Teleconferencing links small office in Boca Raton, Fla to four M/A Con centers in San Diego,CA; Catawba, N.C.; Germantown, MD; and Burlington, MA. The company is also a vendor of teleconferencing systems that make use of its satellite link. Instead of two to three days to arrange cross country meetings, thirty minutes is required to arrange teleconference meetings. What this means is that M/A Con can respond very quickly to changing market conditions. Yes, not all businesses are jumping into teleconferencing. Many will wait until substantial savings have been demonstrated by the leaders.
Various forms of teleconferencing are also being created in computer networks. The simplest is the chat mode of information utilities. More advanced versions of text teleconferencing are in widespread use. One example is the US Army Missile command. Currently, communications companies are creating video teleconferencing systems in computer networks. For example, Northern Telecom has developed the Visit system which is an $3899addon to a PC or Mac. This system provides a separate window for the image of both parties on both screens delivering 8-14 frames per second. In addition, both participants can bring up a drawing or document in a shared workspace. As multimedia PCs become commonplace video conference rooms will be accomplished with an installed video camera and a board for transmission and reception for less than a thousand.