Videoconference in three dimensions

It’s neither a dream nor something that you find in an amusement park. 3D videoconference, also called 'telepresence', consists on creating a virtual image of the person at the other side of the line like if he or she were in our own room. Some related examples are 3D movies, which anyway are not having the spread of classical movies, probably because the industry is not concentrating their efforts on them, which might be spectacular but difficult to produce.

Some of the main big players in the industry are interested in this platform like Nortel, Cisco, Ericsson, Lucent, etc. If we compare this proposal with existing mobile videoconferencing, it seems there’s no much hype around this service over 3G networks: still not many people using it. However, if we think in today’s global world where lots of people travel around the world for business matters, don’t you think that these advances in videoconferencing can help to reduce the travel necessities and improve the quality of people’s personal life?

Telecom stars play together

There’s an initiative called Telecommunications Platform Initiative, initiated by Sun MicroSystems in junction with Ericsson and Nokia. The idea is to create a standardized Platform to facilitate the integration of telecom equipment and improve the design, development and supply chain of the networks provided by the networks.

Standardization is fundamental for Telecommunications, and it’s interesting that some of the giants in this world partner to come up with a unique solution. But standards are good also for several other aspects of life. For example, the world is a “babel” of languages, but can you imagine what would happen if not all the world were using a decimal numbering system?