Bandwidth access and capability is the centre of most discussions amongst Internet users and ICT service providers wanting to optimise the latest technology offerings the telecommunications sector has to offer. Telecommunication companies are said to have access to the SeaCom cable from June this year, which will hopefully improve bandwidth capabilities in South Africa. Video conferencing is fast becoming the preferred communication and collaboration tool due to lean economic times as well as the drive for companies to become more “Green”.
According to a leading South African technology research company, World Wide Worx, Internet users in South Africa for 2008 totalled 4, 590,000. With numbers rising, the greatest challenge will be for service providers to offer enough bandwidth to support the constant introduction of emerging technologies.
Researchers from Siemens Corporate Technology (CT) have been playing a major role in developing a standard that makes it possible to transmit high quality video signals, with low bandwidth. Fred Maurus, divisional manager of technology development and marketing at Siemens Enterprise Communications says, “The researchers lent their expertise to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), which developed a new video standard called H.264/MPEG4-AVC. This is a very efficient standard for compressing animated pictures, and it is well established for use in video conferences.”
Among the features contributed by Siemens is the process for efficiently eliminating compression artifacts in video. Video data is compressed for mobile TVs, DVDs and video cameras, as well as for video conferencing and surveillance systems. Compared to the previous MPEG-2 standard, which required about four megabits per second for digital TV, the H.264 standard cuts the data rate for video transmission by more than half without affecting the video quality.
Says Maurus: “This compression requires a lot of computing power. However, this is why Siemens CT has also developed a highly efficient codec for H.264. This system enables conventional PCs and laptops to encode high-resolution videos in real-time so that high quality large format images can be transmitted without delay despite low bandwidths.”
Video conferencing can be used in a host of different environments, which is one of the many reasons why the technology is so popular. With focus now being placed on preserving the environment and tightening of budgets due to the economic downturn, the biggest advantage or benefit video conferencing has to offer is the ability to meet with people in remote locations without incurring travel expenses and reducing an enterprises' carbon footprint.
“Business meetings, educational meetings, healthcare conferences and more can all be easily conducted due to video conferencing technology. Individuals living in remote areas can also use video conferencing to keep in touch with the world at large. Enterprises who operate on an international level also require immediate communication with key decision makers,” says Maurus.
As a result of Unified Communications and the latest H.264 video standard, video conferencing will save time, stimulate better brainstorming, knowledge sharing and information gathering. The possibilities for communication are virtually endless. Information and knowledge are disseminated at more rapid rates, and collaboration between people occurs more willingly and freely.
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