Cisco pursues 'telepresence' goals

21.06.2006
Cisco Systems Inc. CEO John Chambers offered a video networking demonstration Tuesday as an example of how network bandwidth will grow drastically over the next two years.

"I'm going to bet there will be a 200 percent increase in [network] loads in two years because of video," Chambers told an audience of IT professional at Cisco Networkers 2006 in Las Vegas.

Chambers demonstrated how video of professional baseball games could be captured from the IP network coming to a home over a broadband line for viewing on a full-room high definition television. That capability will be something corporations can turn to for global meetings and other uses such as telemedicine, Chambers and industry analysts here said.

How soon Chambers' vision of "telepresence" will materialize is a matter of debate, however. Zeus Kerravala, an analyst at Yankee Group Inc. in Boston, said it might not materialize for at least five years.

Cisco customers at the Networkers 2006 event agreed that video streaming and videoconferencing will become more important in the next few years, but disagreed with Chambers on how soon demand will spike.

"I'm using some video now, but [Chambers' prediction] is quite an increase in bandwidth, and that's hard to imagine," said Brandon Buffin, systems administrator at Ball Homes in Lexington, Ky. Executives at the home building company use Internet Protocol soft phones on their laptops to conduct meetings while traveling. The laptops can be easily equipped with cameras to become videoconferencing endpoints.