Ericsson, Qualcomm make progress on VoLTE
Ericsson and Qualcomm claims to have the world first voice call handover between LTE and WCDMA networks. Read more at Total Telecom.

A Day Made of Glass
Telepresence options wrote an article about the highly successful ‘A Day Made of Glass 2′ video. If you haven’t watched the original yet, see it below:

Videoconferencing at CES
AnandTech wrote about the videoconferencing solutions presented at CES, covering Vidyo and Biscotti.

In the last few days I was hooked to the CES 2012 stream to see what would be the coolest products of 2012. It seems that in most categories the coolest products of 2012 would be those of 2011, maybe with a better screen. While this is disappointing to some, I believe that there is a value of small gradual improvements - Tablets just now become more and more useful as a productivity device, we would probably see lots of innovation from the software side in the next few months. But even if CES was rather sleepy this year, some products worth mentioning and also in an enterprise perspective. My list is shorter than Anatoli’s, but I think it’s similar in nature:

• Transparent LCDs – Samsung’s transparent ’smart-window’ concept showed us that transparent LCDs can be used not only in shopping mall installations, but also in homes and office environments. Telepresence Options already see it as a potential technology for telepresence installations, among many other things.

• Smarts TVs are nothing new, but as we see products like the ‘Ubuntu TV‘ and the Android 4.0 powered TVs – it’s only a matter of time before TVs will be the place where most people ‘Skype’ in, and maybe later – companies video-conferencing with. Future TVs might also include depth sensors, and those, beside offering gesture based interface might also help enhance video conferencing experience, as showed in the Kinect Conferencing demo.

• Telepresence Robots – when I first mentioned telepresence robots in the IMTC Blog I talked about them as specialized medical product, that might find their ways into the enterprise world. Well, that’s not really an ‘IF’ question anymore – LTE enabled Vgo robots were showed in CES 2012, and the technology is already being used for remote workers and management.

To me, those were the real highlights of CES (well, unless 4k video is your thing, but we sure need a lot of bandwidth for that).

Back in May, I was arguing about the true meaning of Telepresence. An analyst named Rob Bamforth from Quocirca wrote an article saying that the true meaning of Telepresence isn’t big screens and costly systems – it’s the illusion of being there – and for that he argued that low-lantancy is enough. I for the other hand, thought that low-lantency is only a part of the picture, and that for total immersion one must need eyesight level cameras and all the technical mumbo-jumbo.

Room Systems – anything less isn’t ‘Telepresence’?

But putting aside the exact semantics regarding the *videoconferencing* term called Telepresence, let’s talk about the general concept of tele-presence:
Lets say for a second that I own a business that relays heavily on out-of-office workers – and from all I concern, those workers are just as available in terms of communications, as people that work inside the office – isn’t that telepresence? Isn’t that the notion of having those people ‘here with me’?

From a business, and practical point of view – that is telepresence.

Cisco’s Cius – good for remote workers, but not as widespread as an iPhone

A few years ago, achieving that goal was costly and sometimes impossible. It is mainly because of the work of vendors such as RADVISION and Vidyo that this situation has changed. Scalable Video Coding is the key behind recent developments in both low-cost HD video systems and mobile video conferencing. This relatively new technology allows for high quality video communication over the unmanaged connections, such as the Internet. If the codec couldn’t have the ability to adapt to unstable bandwidth it would be impossible to connect remote workers reliably to a conference call. But now with SVC and broadband – it’s possible. These days, EVERYONE has smartphones that are capable of video communication – so wouldn’t it just make sense to turn them into a small video-conferencing device?One of the first companies to introduce a mobile client for it’s video-conferencing platform was RADVISION. When they released the first version the mobile client, it only had the ability to manage the video conference, not to be a part of it as a video client – effectively making an iPad a neat remote control pad. Today both iPhones and iPads has cameras and the latest version of Scopia Mobile is a fully functioning one – at last, the ability to connect to a conference call when on the go.

RADVISION’s Scopia Mobile – high-quality videoconferencing for iDevices

Just like the desktop client, Scopia mobile support video-conference with multiple participants (up to 28) and data sharing via h.329 (which is super important for out-of-office workers). But what’s really special about it that it just work well. IMTC is using Scopia internally for meetings and webinars, and in the latest meeting, the VP marketing of IMTC – Kfir Pravda, had to call in while driving, from his iPhone, over a 3G connection. That was a conference call with multiple people around the world, Kfir himself was in Israel!

3G-enabled conference with an iPhone – Amazing!

The call just worked. This is in my view, amazing, knowing how difficult it is to get a decent video-call quality from a 2-way call in a non-commercial system such as Skype (at least here, in Israel). In terms of features, again – that’s a fully functioning Scopia – and on the iPad2 it supports full 720P video.

I think that mobile video clients will create a revolution in video-conferencing, the form-factor is there (tablets), the technology is there (H.264) and the out-of-office situation will probably grew larger and require businesses to adapt accordingly.
Maybe Rob was right and the true meaning of Telepresence is just mobile video-conferencing that actually works.

Here on the IMTC blog we plan to compare a few mobile solutions over the next months, Scopia included. So stay tuned.

IMTC Newest Member – Intel Corporation
IMTC Welcomes Intel as it’s newest member! Among recently added members are also Siemens Enterprise Communications GmbH & Co. KG. and LG.

HSPA & HSPA Evolution Info
Can be found on the 3g4g UK site – the website contains whitepapers and presentations about HSPA – showing the standard advancements in each release.
Link originally found in 3G4G Blog.

Vidyo for Telemedicine
Language barriers can often be problematic for health-care services and handicapped deaf patients are even a bigger problem. The following video by Vidyo shows a simple and practical use of telemedicine:

DVE Huddle Rooms
DVE announced the availability of demonstration Telepresence rooms in their new offices (3112 West Alpine Street, Santa Ana, CA. 92704). The new Huddle systems use Vidyo codecs and iPad based control pads.
For more info see http://www.dvetelepresence.com/news

Vidyo Rises $22.5 Million in Series D Funding Round
Video has raised a $22.5 million in a Series D round led by QuestMark Partners. The funds will be used to expand sales and marketing activities and help create the next generation video-conferencing equipement.
Source: TMCNET.

LightSquared Expect Over 100 Costumers For It’s Wholesale Network
“We expect that number could be close to a hundred,” CEO Sanjiv Ahuja says in an interview for C-SPAN’s The Communicators series. He didn’t say how long LightSquared might take to reach that number.”  Source: Lightreading.com

SMBs Switch to VoIP as a cheap alternative
The majority of participants in recent 8×8 customers survey reveals that more than half of the service usersw are “more concerned” about business expenses in August 2011 than they were in August 2010. More at http://www.fierceenterprisecommunications.com/story/survey-smbs-see-growth-ahead-focus-cutting-costs/2011-09-28

Panasonic reveals Telepresence Robot
What was once considered a niche now is mainstream – Telepresence Robots are here and are here to stay.
Panasonic recently revealed it’s healthcare assistance providing not only remote assistance but also specific roles like hair-washing:
Source: http://www.telepresenceoptions.com/2011/09/panasonic_rolls_out_telepresen

Telepresence Basics at NAB2011
Theo Economides, a consultant at Greenline Emeritus Consulting did a wonderful lecture about the basics of Telepresence. Theo talks about the fundamentals of the Telepresence experience, hardware and the industry. You can see it as a 3 part Youtube video in the following links:
* Part 1
* Part 2
* Part 3

Frost & Sullivan Honors Vidyo with Global 2011 Product Differentiation Excellence Award for Videoconferencing Infrastructure Systems
Vidyo received the  Frost & Sullivan Global Product Differentiation Excellence Award in Videoconferencing. Frost & Sullivan’s analysis indicates that “Vidyo’s disruptive platform and APIs will expand the market”. I already mentioned that Vidyo is on the right track and as a little example – last week (12-17/09/2011) Vidyo was mentioned over the web almost 273 times, which is more than the term “cisco+telepresence” – 255 times. (data by Viralheat.com).

Source: MarketWatch

AT&T Launched its LTE network today
AT&T Will offer service to up to 15 cities until the end of this year.
Source: AT&T.

Consumers love videoconferencing – but only if it’s free!
Analyst survey shows that interest in video-conferencing drops dramatically when it is priced for more than 5 dollars a month.
Source: fierceenterprisecommunications.com

LTE Rollouts at 3G4G Blog
So how many LTE networks are there? and who was first?
Check the data at 3G4G Blog.

Spending On Videoconferencing and Telepresence To Double By 2015
Infonetics predicted in a recent released study that enterprises will spend over $5 billion on video-conferencing and Telepresence equipment.
Unlike the sales of PBX, recession hasn’t hurt the video-conferencing very much, the assumption that video-conferencing can help save on traveling costs make a good case for the necessity of it.
More info at: http://www.networkcomputing.com/unified-communications-voip/229500364

Researches at Rice University figured out how to double mobile download speeds
Using full-duplex devices (MIMO technology), networks peers can be increased as much as twice using the same amount of cellular towers.
The technology is expected to be seen in LTE-Advanced networks, further away into the future.
More into at: http://www.intomobile.com/2011/09/07/researchers-figure-out-double-mobile-download-speeds-without-need-install-more-cell-towers/

BSA Reports – Over Half Of The World’s PCs Contains Pirated Software
China is leading the chart with the most favorable approach to piracy, which is a big problem as China today, is the biggest market for personal computers. China has over $7.78 Billion in pirated software installed.
More info at: http://www.totaltele.com/view.aspx?ID=467522

Qualcomm Device to Device Communication Technology
3G4G Blog posted a presentation and video of a neat technology called FlashlinQ by Quallcomm.
The Video speaks well for itself, and if it indeed allow wireless-LAN range with minimal battery usage, it does look very interesting:

Telepresence Robots to take over video-conferencing market?
Apparently, Telepresence robots (which I already mentioned in my “Telepresence How Does It Work?” post) gain momentum as a valid representation of remote workers:

• Jim O’Neill from FierceEnterpriseCommunications wrote in favor of the concept, talking about the benefits of a robot as a cheap (at least, relatively to high-end videoconferencing room/telepresence suite) way of creating a remote presence of a worker (i.e – Telepresence).
• Chris Jablonski from ZDNet went as far as writing a “3 reasons x is better than y” type of article, explaining why he thinks Robots will trump videoconferencing equipment. While his claims are valid, it should be mentioned that video-conferencing does support 3D projection and mobile devices (thus extend beyond the conference room). My bet is that the robot won’t replace anything, just join in as another office appliance with varied popularity (depends mostly on the amount of remote workers and the nature of the office work being done in the workplace).

NO LTE Roaming
As mentioned before, LTE roaming isn’t to be expected soon. Operators throughout the world use different frequencies and there is no phone available or planned to support all of them.
Dan Jones, editor at LightReading.com reminds us that fact yet again, but in video:

Mobile Spectrum
The following marketing video was created by the Mobile Future coalition, which try to convince US law-makers to allocate more wireless spectrum for commercial usage:

Source: 3G4G Blog.

AT&T VP of U-verse & Video Products Interview
FirceTelecom posted an interview with Jeff Weber, VP of U-verse and video products at AT&T.
In the interview Jeff explains why AT&T’s offering for triple service (IPTV, Internet and Voice) proved to be highly successful – a great read in my humble opinion:
http://www.fiercetelecom.com/special-reports/jeff-weber-growth-att-u-verse-and-plug-play-home-networks

FCC Clears 650mhz Spectrum for Rural Connectivity
The Federal Communications Commission announced its decision to free part of the 650MHz spectrum for wireless backhaul. The decision should should help expand network availability in remote/rural areas. More info at http://www.phonescoop.com/articles/article.php?a=8622

Lightsquared Signs a Roaming Agreement with Cleartalk
Lightsquared signs a roaming agreement with Cleartalk, getting one step closer to their LTE network launch:http://mobile.engadget.com/2011/08/08/lightsquared-signs-roaming-agreement-with-cleartalk-thumbs-nose/

Polycom announced the Polycom CX7000 a Microsoft Lync Video Conferencing System
The CX7000 is the one of the first Lync enabled room solutions from Polycom – it contains a high-end camera, a SFF thin-pc (powered by windows 7 embedded), full-dupkex speakerphone and wireless keyboard-mouse set. The CX7000 is a part of the CX series, which is tailored for Microsoft Lync connectivity.
Source: http://blog.tmcnet.com/blog/tom-keating/polycom/polycom-today-announced-the-polycom.asp

Polycom CX7000

Lifesize to offer Videoconferencing on the Cloud
LifeSize announced it’s new video collaboration platfrom – LifeSize Connections.
LifeSize connections will offer HD video calling with full connectivity to LifeSize video conferencing rooms, PC and Mac clients. LifeSize Connections will offer nine-way video bridging, data encryption and more.

More info at FierceEnterpiseCommunications.

Avatar based virtual chat-room service
Microsoft unveiled it’s Kincet virtual chat service – a virtual chat that use motion tracking and facial recognition with the Kinect camera. Each user will be represented via a cartoon avatar and will be able to join with up to sever other people in one of 24 different virtual environments. The avatars will show different gestures in realtime such as smiles, nods, etc.

More info at Gizmag.com.

HP Broadened It’s UC Portfolio
After selling it’s Telepresence business to Polycom, HP strengthen it’s partnerships with Microsoft, Polycom, Avaya and Alcatel-lucent as UC partners. HP goal is to sell UC services based on open and interoperable products from various makers.
More info at eWeek.com.

Creating Telepresence Enviorments – Telepresence Design Guide by ‘Telepresence Options’
Telepresence Options posted a great guide for building Telepresence environments. From audio to lighting to furniture – it’s all there:
Creating Telepresence Environments