VIDEO IN THE PIPE

Videoconferencing has been available commercially for more than a decade, but the service has barely grown beyond its original niche market. It's still a service for big corporations — frustrating IT people and draining funds from company coffers worldwide. Purchasing the three ISDN lines required at every site, paying the monthly and hourly rate charges, and fine-tuning the complex customer premises equipment have kept videoconferencing out of the boardrooms of all but the most committed corporations.

But videoconferencing may be experiencing a long-awaited golden age. New IP technologies have simplified the provisioning process, making videoconferencing more flexible and pushing it over different types of transmission lines.

Most significantly, the whiz-bang engineers at IP services companies have managed to squeeze videoconferencing onto a DSL line. That could be the milestone for which the technology has been waiting. While even medium-sized businesses have T-1 and fiber connections these days, it's the small businesses, branch offices and telecommuters that give videoconferencing its reason for being.

Wire One Technologies is one of the few service providers to deploy an IP videoconferencing solution over DSL. Called Glowpoint, the service uses synchronous DSL lines from New Edge Networks and Covad Communications to provide a 512 kb/s connection, linking customers with an IP backbone with 13 points of presence throughout the U.S., Canada, Asia and Europe.

While Wire One offers the IP videoconferencing services to a variety of customers using different types of connections ranging from T-1s to fiber, Wire One was surprised that the majority of its customers were linking to the network with DSL. Chief Technology Officer Michael Brandofino said that 60% of Wire One's IP videoconferencing customers are using DSL to hook remote sites into their video communications networks, and many are small businesses using DSL exclusively.

At first Wire One expected the adoption of the IP service would come from videoconferencing's traditional ISDN customer base of enterprises and medium and large business, but Brandofino said the company was surprised by the number of new small businesses that embraced the technology.

“We're really happy with SDSL as the last-mile technology for videoconferencing, and so are a lot of customers,” Brandofino said. “Because of DSL, we're actually opening up this market to small businesses. That's never been done before. And for larger customers, we're giving them good reason to give up their ISDN lines.”

Of Wire One's more than 3000 customers and 22,000 installed video endpoints, only 245 are using the Glowpoint service over about 1200 separate endpoints. While the service is growing rapidly (for the first quarter, call minutes over the IP network increased 44%), Brandofino admitted it's still far from widespread adoption.

Part of the reason is that companies with dedicated ISDN platforms are understandably reluctant to overhaul their communications networks. Conversely, new customers are hesitant to adopt a new type of telecom service. And part of the problem is IP's reputation as an inadequate protocol for transmitting real-time video: Voice has just recently overcome that stigma, but video has yet to do the same.

“We'd like to be farther along than we are,” Brandofino said. “To tell you the truth, customers are reluctant to move to IP. Part of it is a reluctance to change in this economy and part of it is resistance from IT departments who feel it won't work over their networks. But the fact is, IP technologies are not only constantly improving, they're working now. ISDN, on the other hand, isn't going to get any better.”

Legacy videoconferencing technologies work almost exclusively over ISDN lines, three of which are necessary to get the six channels required to support the 348 kb/s needed for a multi-station video call. Running video over ISDN, however, requires splitting each call among the six channels and remultiplexing the signals at each endpoint, a process that drives up the costs of the endpoints. In addition, customers must pay per-minute, as well as monthly, charges for each of the six channels running a standard voice conferencing call.

Providers that run IP-based videoconferencing systems throw videoconferencing traffic into the data pipe using multiprotocol label switching (MPLS) to prioritize the video traffic across the network. For example, Wire One uses either a dedicated SDSL line or bandwidth from a company T-1 or optical link to bring the traffic to one of its media gateways co-located with its carrier partners. The company then immediately offloads it onto its MPLS IP backbone. By bringing the traffic off the carriers' network as quickly as possible and routing it over private pipes to its destination, Wire One avoids most of the latency and jitter pitfalls often associated with IP video, Brandofino said.

Netifice Communications, which provides integrated IP services for business customers, provisions DSL lines and other connections for companies seeking to set up their own IP videoconferencing systems. But because of the increasing demand for the service, Netifice is rapidly developing its own IP solution.

“Our sales force is constantly asking if we can set up an IP videoconferencing solution for our customers,” said Greg Davis, Netifice's vice president of marketing. “People are attracted by the idea of lower-cost [customer premises] equipment and getting away from the per-minute charges of ISDN.”

According to Netifice Chief Technology Officer Jeff Pompeo, the ISP is not only investigating IP videoconferencing over dedicated DSL lines for high-end service, but also a lower-bandwidth service that will share the DSL pipe with standard Internet access. Unlike ISDN, which requires a dedicated 348 kb/s connection at both ends of the conversation, IP videoconferencing allows for the allocation of bandwidth based on connection speed.

Netifice plans on incorporating dynamic bandwidth elements into its solution, which will enable it to prioritize video traffic over the DSL connection while videoconferencing is in use and reopen the pipe for full Internet access after the video conversation ends. Such a solution would make videoconferencing a viable option to most teleworkers and telecommuters in the U.S. Instead of facing the cost of getting two separate DSL lines — one dedicated for Internet, one for video — customers could run the application over a standard SDSL connection.

Overcoming the dedicated-line obstacle could be the one driver necessary to bring videoconferencing into the mainstream. Analysts are already pointing to the popularity of Web cameras. Such technologies establish simple peer-to-peer links over the Internet, sending choppy and low-resolution video.

But the appeal for a high-resolution, 30 frames-per-second, fully managed service is obvious, Wire One's Brandofino said. Wire One already is implementing features such as video operators and one-touch calling. Soon video and voice calls will be equally simple to make, he said.

Videoconferencing is not just becoming more accessible — so is the will to use it. Safety concerns following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the current conflict in Iraq have seen to that. Fear of flying and economic constraints on business travel have all made videoconferencing much more popular over the last year, said Gerry Kaufhold, principle analyst for converging markets and technologies at In-Stat/MDR.

The surge over the last 24 months, however, is petering out. In order to sustain growth, new IP video technologies will have to step up. Kaufhold predicted that service providers will start packaging videoconferencing with suites of business applications such as unified messaging, electronic meetings and voice over IP. The trend is also shifting from the big businesses to smaller companies as endpoint manufacturers such as Sony and Polycom build cheaper CPE, Kaufhold added.

“If you think about it, videoconferencing is the last technology to go IP,” Kaufhold said. “In the next five years you'll see it make a transition though, and videoconferencing will open up to a whole new range of customers. There are 4 million medium and small businesses out there, none of which have videoconferencing. That's an awfully tempting market.”