US videoconferencing specialist, Vtel Corp is working to raise its European profile because it believes that videoconferencing is essential to businesses there, even though the market has not taken off. Videoconferencing has been slower to take off than analysts originally anticipated and videoconferencing providers have been hit financially as a result, largely because unit sales are remaining stable, but unit prices are falling. Vtel has not seen a slow up in demand, said Roger Huckerby, director of international marketing at Vtel. But crossing the threshold into a volume business as opposed to a specialist one is the challenge that we face. The H.323 standard for conferencing over local networks as opposed to over ISDN phone lines has proved to be a hindrance to the market, at least in the short term, as customers are tending to wait to see how the technology takes off before they invest in it. H.323 conferencing’s time hasn’t come yet, said Huckerby, it is not an issue of worrying about what will happen in the future, because it is no different to any high tech investment, but because the local networks aren’t ready for it. LANs need more than H.323. Other standards need to be in place, namely reservations protocol (RSVP) and RTP standards. This is because video is real time and cannot be dealt with in chunks in the way that data can. In addition, users need capacity in the LAN for video and that takes time to be adopted, Huckerby said. A further factor is the need for development of gateway technology between H.323 and other technologies such as H.320 which is beginning to be introduced by companies like Videoserver. Ease of use has proved to be a barrier in the adoption of videoconferencing in business because users want to be able to behave as they would normally in a meeting rather than be restricted by technology. To this end Vtel has taken on German industrial design company, Frog Design, to carry out studies into how users interact with videoconferencing products. The results will be out later in the year. Austin, Texas-based Vtel will be at the Cebit show in Hanover next week promoting its new product, the WG 500 system aimed at workgroup business market. Features include conferencing via ISDN or dedicated networks; connections from 56Kbps to 384Kbps data rates, 27 inch SVGA monitor with integrated speakers, a 233Mhz multimedia personal computer with local network access; and a pan, tilt and zoom camera. The WG500 is priced from $10,000.