Getting the word out on the Web

One sign that Webcasting is coming on strong is the size and marketing muscle of providers who have added it to their enterprise services. That roster now includes two of the biggest business Internet companies - MCI WorldCom and Qwest Communications. Both have started divisions that will help corporations get their messages out to anyone with a Web browser and an Internet connection.

"Webcasting may be poised to take off, particularly as an e-commerce application," said Clark Tierney, an analyst with Noble-Bowen Consulting. "Companies that have been disappointed by videoconferencing are still anxious to find a low-cost method of event production. Service providers that want their outsourcing business may be just as interested in Webcasting as a point of difference."

MCI WorldCom has rolled out its Advanced Communications Service, targeting enterprises with a Web-based streaming video and audio product that incorporates texts, slide presentations, multimedia and chat.

The service, available to businesses over MCI WorldCom's UUNet IP network, differs from videoconferencing because it takes place over the Web rather than a private linkup between specific video terminals. It also differs from netconferencing, which features graphics and text on the Web but does not offer video and requires a separate audio line to hear voice.

"There's also a major bandwidth difference between ACS and videoconferencing," said Julianne Hahn, MCI WorldCom product manager for ACS. "Videoconferencing can take place only in real-time, too." MCI WorldCom's ACS lets enterprises archive sales meetings, training courses and analyst presentations for later access through the Web.

"We've taken what we felt was the most popular and best package out there, RealPlayer, and built around that the ability to synchronize slides with playback audio and video, as well as to provide text chat over the Internet," said Ron Schaerer, senior manager of ACS engineering at MCI WorldCom. The carrier didn't want to include separate caching technology, and RealPlayer handles streaming and buffering multimedia over the Internet, he said. "We didn't want this service to require anything special from the end user: If you have access to the Internet, you've got it." The other development task was adding a software set-up wizard for first-time users.

ACS's real value is in the full management capabilities that MCI WorldCom has integrated into the service, Schaerer said. "We've created all the applications necessary for registration, security, event scheduling, billing and reporting - all of those functions Web-interfaced to the customer so that they can go in and look at their bills or set up new events through their browser interface." Content is hosted through UUNet's data center in Virginia.

End users who sign on for ACS Webcasts are asked to choose an access speed based on the type of Internet connection they have - high-speed LAN or dial-up. The bandwidth-challenged can receive only the streaming audio portion of the presentation.

Preset download speeds can go as high as 300 kb/s, Schaerer said. Generally, though, MCI WorldCom's ACS sends streaming media at 40 kb/s on the LAN setting and 18 kb/s on the dial-up setting, to ensure delivery over a 56 kb/s or 28.8 kb/s modem, respectively. The audio-only setting streams at 9 kb/s, to work on modems with capacity as low as 14.4 kb/s. "That's especially useful when the end user is a salesperson on the road in a hotel room," Schaerer said. "You can't count on 28.8 [kb/s] in a hotel room."

Meanwhile, Qwest Communications will sell QSHOW, its privately branded version of third-party conferencing service bureau MSHOW. com, an interactive, Web-based multimedia broadcasting service.

MSHOW's main difference from the MCI WorldCom service is its use of separate access lines - an Internet connection for the video portion of the presentation and a telephone link for the audio. This separation of channels is made necessary by the vagaries of the present-day Internet, said Bob Ogdon, president and CEO of MSHOW.com.

"The Internet today just doesn't have the reliability of the telephone network," Ogdon said. "In a presentation going out to hundreds of people, some of the audience aren't going to have speakers with their computers. For others, the Internet connection's going to go down on them, either on the network, at the local ISP or the specific server. Our job as a conferencing service bureau is to make sure the client can reach everybody they want to, and that means a telephony foundation is the way to go."

The problem is particularly acute if the conference leader's Internet connection goes down. In that case, one of MSHOW's professional show managers takes over and leads the show from the company's Denver network operations center (NOC) while the leader reads copy over the telephone landline.

Incorporating the telephone also makes these conferences a fairly simple download - a C++ application of less than 1 Mb that resides on the desktop. "That allows us to go through firewalls worldwide," Ogdon said. "We're totally legal going through Port 80 and delivering HTML or other content to the browser alone." Developing that capacity to work within the browser required proprietary technology and about three years of development work, he added.

The application's controlling intelligence resides in the MSHOW host at the Denver NOC. At the local edge, on the user's desktop, the application can send back information to the host about the user's access bandwidth, synchronizing slide shows and animation or requesting the microphone.

Telephony also adds interactivity. MSHOW bridges the public switched and IP networks so that the service can open and close ports to allow any of the up to 500 audience members to ask a question of the speaker. Questioners hit a toolbar button requesting a voice link; the session leader instructs the MSHOW manager to open a port for that user who can speak into the phone and be heard by all other audience members listening via phone. Users without separate phone and Internet lines can participate by sending text messages to the session leader or to a moderator.