There is no such thing as more bandwidth, processing power or acceptance of IP based technologies

By Sagee Ben-Zedeff

Categories: Innovation, Video Conferencing

August 11th, 2008

Tsahi argued that UC, Social Media, Web 2.0 or Phone 2.0 doesn’t really exist. His argument – in the last decade only three things have changed: there’s more bandwidth, more processing power and more acceptance of IP based technologies.

Although I tend to agree there is no real revolution here, just evolution, I think the basic assumption – more bandwidth, more processing power, more acceptance – is wrong, or at least should be taken in the right context. Actually, if one is to try and figure out why our industry – the Unified Communication industry, that is – is still struggling, I would say it has a lot to do with relying too much on these assumptions:

There’s more bandwidth?

I really don’t think so. It’s true that broadband penetration has increased worldwide, and the average internet connection has gone up from 64Kbps in the past to, let’s say, 2 or 4 Mbps, but the data being transferred has gone up quite drastically as well. A high quality 1080p video is 4Mbps at least. Do we have more bandwidth in light of our growing bandwidth requirements? Nope.

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There’s more processing power?

I honestly don’t think so. It’s true that according to Moore’s law processors are getting stronger, but even the latest and greatest from the leading chip vendors can’t handle a single 1080p “port” (simultaneously encoding and decoding). Do we have more processing power in light of our growing processing power requirements? Nope.

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There’s more acceptance of IP based technologies?

I am afraid not. It’s true that more enterprises are using IP based products – IP telephony, instant messaging, and video conferencing. But the numbers, especially in relation to legacy PSTN systems, are quite mild. Do we have more acceptance of IP based technologies in light of the advancements in technology? Nope.

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Yet still many are burying their heads in the sand, developing high end IP based products, that will require more processing power and more bandwidth, instead of solving the real issues first – ensuring enough bandwidth on the infrastructure level to allow mass deployment, investing in dedicated processors for the industry and/or inventing new schemes of operation that require less processing power, and of course strongly endorsing IP based technologies for the masses.

You can call it UC, you can call it Enterprise 2.0, you call it whatever you like. Tsahi is right – we don’t need new tags. What we do need is vision, solutions and hard work.