videoconferencing
A Brief History Of The Future Of Videoconferencing
Our personal and professional lives are about to change.
By Joe Manuele
The year was 1997. I was an Account Manager for Cisco Systems, working out of our Toronto, Ontario, Canada office, selling infrastructure to internet ser vice providers (ISPs), phone companies and cable companies. Business was good—ver y good! That’s because ever y one of my accounts needed something called a “router” to connect to the internet. Ironically enough, Cisco’s biggest channel partner in the region was Bell Canada, a 100-plus-year-old regional bell operating company (RBOC), which invited Cisco to present to a group of 300 executives. We, of course, obliged, tapping Cisco CTO Ed Kozel to lead the discussion. Ever y Cisco field rep revered Ed. He was responsible for not only setting our strategy, but also leading our ver y aggressive merger-andacquisition (M&A) activity. Ed gave us more product to sell than our customers even realized they needed—telecom
equipment like Ethernet switches and integrated ser vices digital network (ISDN) modems. Ed flew cross-countr y from sunny Silicon Valley to a chilly Toronto. With much excitement in the air, he took the stage prepared to tell the warm, polite Canadian audience what the future would hold. Ed spoke eloquently of how the internet would change ever ything. We nodded approvingly, clutching our Tim Horton’s coffee cups. Then, all hell broke loose. Ed dropped a bombshell on Bell Canada’s executive team, proclaiming that longdistance phone calls would disappear as a revenue stream and that, in the near future, voice would ride for free on this glorious data highway we were helping ever yone to build. The articulation of that inconvenient truth was the first time I witnessed the effect of digital disruption. And it was the first time I realized that we weren’t
just creating new revenue streams— we were also destroying old ones. For Bell Canada executives in 1997, some of whom were close to retirement, it wasn’t a message they wanted to hear when 90 percent of revenue came from voice ser vices. Despite the shock and awe of Kozel’s bombshell, Bell Canada did react positively to this new reality. It built out a national fiber network, investing billions in broadband infrastructure and next-generation mobile. By contrast, companies like MCI, which relied heavily on long-distance voice minutes as a primar y source of revenue, were dead in the water. So, what does all this have to do with videoconferencing? Well, as it turns out, quite a bit. If we take a step back, our first ability to have more than two groups of people communicate was facilitated by something called the “Audio Tele Conference” ser vice, launched by AT&T at the
Joe Manuele is the CEO of Highfive. He has more than 25 years’ IT and communications experience in the enterprise and global carrier markets, gained at organizations such as Avaya, Cisco and Actelis Networks.
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IT/AV Report
