Lesley Stones
11 October 2001
Fear of flying boosts remote option
The terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon are producing an unexpected surge in demand for video-conferencing.
The fear of flying, coupled with the resulting disruption of air traffic, have convinced more companies to investigate video-conferencing as an alternative to travel. The technologies have long been available but have attracted little attention because (until last month) most people were happy to travel for business meetings.
One company enjoying the spin-off is Regus, which operates a global network of videoconferencing studios open to the public. Kevin Rawnsley, CE of Regus SA, said the company expected continuing high demand for its service as a direct result of the attacks. The first wave of demand for video linkups came from companies and individuals needing to communicate with employees and family members stranded in the US by airport closures immediately after the attacks.
"Now most demand is coming from companies that, for security reasons, would prefer their employees not to fly to meetings unless it is absolutely necessary, and from executives who would rather avoid long airport delays," he said.
Video-conferencing had the advantage and the reassurance of face-to-face contact, he said, even when the participants in a meeting are thousands of kilometres apart.
The fact that the studios can be booked by anyone for a minimum period of an hour has made the concept affordable even for small companies, said Rawnsley.
Regus has almost 400 business centres in the main cities in 50 countries, and each can link to any other centre, or several centres simultaneously. That lets colleagues in several parts of the world conduct meetings without anyone having to travel.
Staff in the centres are on stand-by to run after-hours conferences to cater for international time differences.
In the UK, British Telecoms is conducting a videophone trial using 1000 videophones supplied by Motion Media.
The 18-month trial began almost a year ago, and has been given added impetus by the terrorist attacks.
British Telecoms has found that people are using the videophones for an average of 20 minutes, compared with only three minutes for standard speech calls. The units will go on sale at £650 apiece in British Telecoms shops this month.
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