Video Conferencing Gains Ground in Rural India
By Jatinder Singh
New Delhi, Sep 17, 2007

Video conferencing has always been regarded as an up-market technology, normally linked with large or multinational companies. However, it's now been supplemented to communicate with people settled in remote areas of the country. It's a useful and very interesting technology used worldwide.

Enterprises nowadays are looking forward to extending technology, whippy conferences, whippy deployment, mutual management suites, extremely scalable solutions, secure VoIP conferencing, and embedded multipoint alternatives more in videoconferencing solutions. Apart from large enterprises, small and medium enterprises are also adjusting videoconferencing solutions.

However, in a country like India where telecom incursion is still at low levels, the average broadband bandwidth availability ranges between 128 and 256 Kbps. And to many video conferencing still seems a distant dream.

As per Frost & Sullivan survey, the videoconferencing market in 2005-06 touched Rs 65.6 crore and is likely to grow at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 24.9% till 2011.

Dinesh Sehgal, regional director (India, Srilanka, and Bangladesh) of Tandberg said, "Any new technology takes time to create impact on the people. The concept of video conferencing in India, 5 year ago, was very limited since the prices of bandwidths were too high. But with the decreasing prices of bandwidths, people are looking at different options and thereby adopting the concept of video communication."

Tandberg had already connected Power Grid Corporation of India Limited (PGCIL) headquarters and offices through the video conferencing solution, which eventually helps employees communicate to the regional offices and station with reduced costs.

The recent IT developments ensures that concept of video conferencing could also be utilized in the rural areas of India to inform farmers about the need of pesticides, giving them proper agricultural and primary education. Besides, it helped in introduction of the concepts like telemedicine in India where healthcare direction can be rendered to far villages and cities from advance countries.

Through the use of video conferencing, unnecessary travel time and expensive STD Calls can be reduced.

Beyond the cost benefits, it also help organizations to become more generative by speeding decision making, scaling knowledge, unifying the organizations, and encouraging work balance, as it makes more opportunities for employees who could talk to a group of professionals from the same area, from the same state, or even across the world.

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