Networking Pipeline | Cisco's Chambers Predicts Dawn Of 'Telepresence'

Cisco CEO John Chambers talked about "Telepresence" during his keynote address at Interop this week (I still have to stop myself from typing "Networld+Interop"). Chambers defined telepresence as the union of high resolution video conferencing and voice conferencing to the point where it will enable attendees to virtually follow speakers as they move around a room (and if you've seen John Chambers speak, you know how he moves around a room).

There have been similar initiatives, such as HP's HALO (created in a partnership with DreamWorks) that are meant to enable extremely high resolution conferencing, to the point where people can feel as if they are in the same room with those with whom they are conferencing. Unfortunately the cost and bandwidth demands of such services have put them beyond the reach of most enterprises.

For example, a HALO room system costs over half a million dollars, plus a recurring cost of nearly $20k per month, plus a T3 (54 Mbps) to meet bandwidth requirements. Even HD conferencing systems from companies such as LifeSize and Polycom typically require at least 1MB per user, which makes their use across the WAN problematic.

Still I wonder how far away we are from virtual reality systems based on lifelike avatars that enable persons to participate in a conference by simply wearing a virtual reality display on their heads. Think about the potential, you could organize your next meeting on the beaches of Hawaii without actually flying there, all through the magic of virtual reality. Of course, once the googles come off and people realize they are back in their offices, productivity is likely to suffer.