Telepresence Services

Telepresence is a combination of products and services that replicates an in-person meeting experience. The technology starts with specially-designed meeting room spaces. It adds high-definition video and audio equipment that can connect multiple locations simultaneously to each other. The equipment usually handles from one to three streams, connecting from two to four locations. It is possible to tie in additional locations through multicast IP, and/or by having locations take turns transmitting their video stream to other locations.

Service providers are highly motivated to sell telepresence services, because each high-definition video/audio stream typically requires 5-6 Mbps, meaning multipoint video sessions may consume 12-24 Mbps – high premium-class port capacities for IP/MPLS networks. Telepresence networks are frequently deployed internationally, which can generate a high amount of revenue for the service provider, all while saving businesses much greater amounts of money in travel costs and lost employee productivity.

Besides vendors and geographic reach of services, there are two major differentiators among telepresence service providers. The first is network-hosted bridging services: These make inter-company video sessions possible, and can provide full management of telepresence services. The second is the network itself, where some providers favor integrating audio/video streams with the existing IP/MPLS corporate network, and others prefer building separate, dedicated IP/MPLS audio/video networks.

The Current Analysis Hot Topics coverage brings together insights from a number of analysts covering a variety of aspects of this topic. This extends to looking at emerging trends, changing market conditions, and both competitive challenges and potential growth opportunities.

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