October 23, 2006

The Rich Are Different Than You and I

By Jim Barthold

Telephone service providers are justifiably worried about becoming telecommunications pipes – especially when it comes to getting revenues from high-end caviar business customers who are frankly more valuable than the peanut butter and jelly residential users.

That’s partially why both Verizon Business and AT&T are lining up to at least test, and probably roll out, a high definition teleconference system from Cisco Systems. While ostensibly aimed at the whole business user space, the system will no doubt stroke the egos of executives with its 1080p video and spatial audio.

“It’s amazing how quickly you forget the technology is there and you just start talking to the person,” said Al Safarikas, senior director of Cisco’s Global Wireline Segment. “I find myself having to describe the taste of beer to someone who hasn’t tasted it before (which fits the potential customers for this service, who are more accustomed to double malt scotch than fermented hops). Liquid bread just doesn’t do it. TelePresence is truly a new level of communication and collaboration.”

The vendor has taken just about everything into consideration in creating the experience, Safarikas said.

The details

“Eye contact has been worked on; full spatial audio has been worked on; the quality of the video has been designed,” he said. “The camera angle … when you’re sitting at the table it looks like the table is going around. It looks elliptical. It’s an in-person experience. The only thing you can’t do is kick someone under the table.”

And they’re probably working on that.

It’s the kind of system that reasonably might be used to train medical students by opening up operating room procedures or help engineers interface with manufacturing facilities. It is, more likely, something that execs will put in their board rooms as the latest technology toy.

With that kind of user in mind, Cisco put in one more feature.

“It’s really simple. It’s as easy as placing a telephone call. When you want to book a TelePresence meeting, you go into your Outlook and book it like you would book a meeting in Outlook,” Safarikas said.

At least the executive’s assistant would.

The combination of a high quality experience that will attract high end customers is the attraction for the folks at Verizon Business and AT&T who are fending off threats from applications providers to make their networks into pipes.

“At the end of the day, if we just provide dumb pipes to an enterprise, there’s going to be a limited amount of value you can bring there,” said Mike Marcellin, executive director of IP and Ethernet Networking at Verizon Business.

- Jim Barthold