RICH PEER-TO-PEER COLLABORATION - beyond telepresence

HD video conferencing lets you see the other party(ies) in such detail that it can appear like they’re there with you, hence the term Telepresence. Telepresence improves the effectiveness of telework, telemedicine, distance learning, multiplayer gaming, e-government, and more. But we can do that today with a business class cable service and don’t need fiber.

Companies like Cisco and Lifesize Communications (an Austin company) can already do HD video conferencing with as little as 1-2 Mbps of bandwidth in each direction, so what would a 1Gbps FTTH service add? Rather than a one-on-one video call, make it a virtual meeting where each participant’s video stream is in HD. That’s 20-30Mbps in each direction for each participant at MPEG2 compression – less with MPEG4 but much more if uncompressed to eliminate latency delays. Why low latency? Consider this:

COLLABORATIVE MUSIC PERFORMANCE - Someone already mentioned a Virtual Garage Band, but imagine an entire orchestra or music ensemble playing together where each musician and the director are geographically dispersed across the city, the nation or the globe. The concept was demonstrated in 2003 when The University of Texas hosted the Internet2 Conference. The Google FTTH network could make it a reality, at least in Austin where our many musicians could connect at that speed.

Posted: March 13, 2010: 4:45 PM