Web conferencing made easy: MCI WorldCom streams media with new product

MCI WorldCom Conferencing has announced a new product that will broadcast a meeting live over the Web, complete with streaming multimedia and any text that can be viewed in a Windows environment. The product will be available in early 1999.

The new offering, Conference Webcast, requires only that recipients have access to a multimedia PC, a standard browser and the Internet. Users point their browsers to a URL and log in with a password and, if necessary, download RealPlayer from the Web site. They then see a framed screen with a window for video, another for text and a third for chat with the other participants and a discussion moderator. Text may include PowerPoint presentations, e-mail messages and Web pages.

"Meeting maniacs are meeting three times a day, five days a week, for the average 20-day work month," said Tim Reedy, vice president of MCI WorldCom Conferencing. "Those are the folks we're targeting here-mid-level to senior managers whose time is at a premium."

Because the call does not attempt two-way interaction, it uses relatively little bandwidth. That means telecommuters can log onto a Conference Webcast with a relatively low-speed modem from home and get a picture not much worse than they would with T-1 access.

Conference Webcast will carry a per-use fee that has not been set yet, said Karen Frazier, Net Conferencing product manager. MCI WorldCom also will offer consulting services for everything from equipment setup and employee training to event design. "We will host your meeting," she said. "If you provide us with the content of your PowerPoint files or have some video you've produced and want to stream onto the Net, we will bridge all that for you."

It remains to be seen whether Conference Webcast will become an integral part of those 60 monthly meetings Reedy refers to.

"MCI WorldCom has a great brand name in this arena, but so far, videoconferencing at least has proved to be too complicated for the average division manager," said analyst Gail Gottschall of DataPartners Corp. "Give these folks a choice between setting up a fancy multimedia meeting or getting people together in a conference call, and they'll reach for the phone nine times out of 10."

But user comfort is part of the expected appeal of Conference Webcast, said Reedy. "With videoconferencing and the other, newer technologies, you've got issues of expensive specialized equipment, hard-to-get phone lines and new user interfaces. But most folks in business today are comfortable with the PC as baseline technology. The Web is ubiquitous, and we're using it for the purpose it was designed for: to carry packetized data."

SBC Communications finalized its merger with Southern New England Telecommunications after receiving approval from the FCC on Oct. 23.

With the merger complete, SBC now serves 36.9 million access lines, has access to more than 84 million potential wireless customers and employs about 129,000 people. According to 1997 figures, the combined annual revenues of the company reached $27.1 billion.

SNET will continue to operate under its current name and remain based in New Haven, Conn. SBC plans to open a regional headquarters for its Northeast wireless operations and base its competitive local exchange carrier operations in Connecticut.

To show its commitment to the community, SBC said it would increase SNET's charitable contributions by more than $1 million over three years. The carrier also plans to begin testing asymmetrical digital subscriber line service in Connecticut within 90 days.