I saw an advert on the tube today that read: ‘Shell out £15 on taxis, £200 on train tickets, £12 on coffee and 30p to spend a penny. Or stop traveling to meetings. It’s your call.’
The company was advertising video conferencing calling. Their slogan was: For business people with more sense than money.
To be fair, they have a point. With the prevalence of video calls at such as high quality, is there any need to travel to meetings, or even into the office?
This comes as Lord Chief Justice said that criminal defendants could phone in court appearances from home using Skype and FaceTime to cut costs.
At his first press conference as Lord Chief Justice, Lord Thomas said "There are innovative ways of providing open justice bearing in mind things such as Skype and FaceTime.
"We need to loosen up our use of Skype and FaceTime, which current IT systems don’t really allow. I am very keen that we should because with most of what happens in court you don’t have problems with security, and we can be much more open to use of Skype and FaceTime than we traditionally have been."
Video conferencing service provider UCi2i has seen a 357% increase in customer usage in just the last year, proving that video conferencing is on the up, particularly thanks to new 4G connection speeds and improved fibre optic technology.
Of course, a comprehensive conferencing system needs to be put in place to ensure the highest quality of conferences for businesses. Skype and FaceTime are all well and good, but their quality is not brilliant and signal drops are common. Enterprises need something less light-weight, or else they risk miscommunication. Lord Cheif Justice should probably consider this.
If given the option, would you rather travel to a meeting, or make a conference call from your home or office?
