Where Can the Power of Video be Unleashed? Using video conferencing for distance learning, telemedicine, engineering and many more purposes reduces travel time, cost and effort How Much Does It Cost? Pricing, as usual, will depend on the level of customization you need  Video Conferencing Internals Types of video conferencing, the equipment they require and the technology they use   Face-to-face from your PC You can get desktop-based video-conferencing applications for free or for a price. How do you set them up?  Whither Service Providers? NIC with its national coverage is a good bet for government departments and PSUs,  while the private sector has to depend on VSNL or local business centers Products for You Various video-conferencing hardware devices and software Fun with Video Adding live video to your Web Video Conferencing on Linux Set up a video-conferencing client on a Linux machine USB Webcams on Linux Setting these up can vary depending on the model you use

Companies can cut travel time, effort and, of course, cost with video conferencing. Distance-learning setups can benefit from the interactivity. The medical community can provide telemedicine. Banks can improve synergy between their various
branches. Organizations in areas
where there are no communication links can maintain presence by 
using satellite links. Read on to find out how video conferencing can help you

Video conferencing is more than setting up two webcams on PCs and seeing each other over a long distance. Such a setup might be good for home usage, but stands nowhere when it comes to using it in a corporate environment, where critical business decisions have to be taken in meetings. That’s where professional video-conferencing solutions come into the picture. With these you get much better quality and you don’t have to sit in front of your PC, adjusting a webcam so that your face is clearly visible at the other end. Professional solutions will let you do it in a conference room with a camera capturing everyone there.

The feasibility of a video-conferencing setup can be understood by first knowing where it can be used and the benefits it offers in those areas. For instance, it can help cut travel time, effort and, of course, cost. For an educational institute, it can give a new dimension to distance learning, making it an interactive affair. The medical community can use it to provide telemedicine services. Similarly, video conferencing can be used by banks to increase the synergy between its various branches. Video conferencing can also be done over a satellite link, and thereby be used even from places where there’s little or no communication infrastructure at all. 

Is video conferencing really meant for you? That’s where the cost factor comes in. A simple professional video-conferencing setup between just two locations can cost a few lakh rupees. So you can imagine the cost for a setup that lets you hold a video conference between many points. So you have to work out the time it takes before it can give you the return on investment.

In this story, we address issues related to setting up video conferencing in a corporate environment, how it can be set up, the technologies behind it, and the video conferencing service providers in the country.