Not only did Cisco announce the opening of public TelePresence suites in London and Boston, available for US$299 to $899 per hour, but rival LifeSize expanded its line of meeting systems that undercut Cisco's prices.

The timing was excellent, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average falling another 733 points on Wall Street Wednesday and credit hard to find, IDC analyst Nora Freedman noted. Cisco's TelePresence systems range in list price from $34,900 to $349,000 per installation.

A new generation of products from LifeSize, ranging from two-seat to six-seat configurations, cost just $10,999 to $49,999. But in addition, the company is taking a different approach from Cisco's focus on dedicated rooms with special furniture and lighting. Users can set up its systems anywhere they want, with any high-definition display they choose, according to CTO Casey King. LifeSize systems also are designed to work over the open Internet with relatively slow connections, he said.

On Wednesday, the company introduced the LifeSize Team 200, Room 200 and three-screen Conference 200. They can be ordered now and are scheduled to begin shipping in the first half of November.

The Room 200 and Conference 200 are new versions of systems for two participants or six participants per room. They bump up the available resolution from 30 frames per second at 720p (720 lines of resolution, progressively scanned) to 30 fps at 1080p.