Will telepresence users push for interoperability?

The last time I tried to write about the need for interoperability within telepresence, I provoked annoyed response from companies such as Polycom and Tandberg, which already have made their services interoperable and are open to connections with others. Understandably, they didn’t want to see the telepresence industry tarred with one brush.

Pretty much everyone in the telepresence space is eager to point to Cisco with a critical eye as the company not interested in interoperating — at least not with other telepresence vendors. Cisco has developed a multipoint switch that will enable interoperation of its telepresence system with both standard definition and high-definition videoconferencing systems that are standards-based. And the company has said that the lack of standards, not any insistence on market domination, is slowing its interoperability efforts where telepresence is concerned.

What’s not yet clear, though, is whether the market is going to push Cisco to offer interoperability options sooner rather than later — and by the market, I mean service providers and end users alike.

To date, Cisco hasn’t had a hard time signing up major telecom service providers to offer managed telepresence services based on its technology. Last week, three of them — AT&T, BT, and Tata Communications — staged a demonstration at Cisco Live that linked AT&T Telepresence Solution sites in Bedminster and Morristown, N.J., and Chicago with a BT site in Colorado Springs, Colo., a Cisco site in San Francisco, and Tata sites in Boston and London.

This demonstration came on the heels of announcements by both AT&T and Tata of expanded support for telepresence in hotel chains — Marriott and Starwood, respectively.

As this technology becomes more pervasive and users become more aware that there are systems out there to which they should be able to connect, the logical thinking is that they will expect their network service providers to give them those connections.

But these still are the early days for telepresence, and the land grab obviously is still on. AT&T admits interoperability is important and “on the road map,” and I suspect there even now are conversations about how Cisco expects to support those plans going forward. But I don’t know how urgent the tone of those discussions might be. Even last week’s demo was just a technology demo. There are no business arrangements yet in place to deliver an interoperable telepresence service.

That puts the ball in the service providers’ court and, by extension, gives their customers some control as well. Only when the people buying videoconferencing in all its forms decide there needs to be a ubiquitous service will the real pressure be on Cisco to play nice with its telepresence competitors.

E-mail me at carol.wilson@penton.com.