NNSquad - Network Neutrality Squad
[ NNSquad ] The next frontier in upstream data - HD Videoconferencing?
Greetings. While the issue of downstream video data volumes is always at or near the top of the list when it comes to Internet bandwidth discussions, we don't hear much about upstream video data -- logical enough since it hasn't been any sort of big deal up to now. But given that most persons' Internet access circuits are very much asymmetrically provisioned to provide much more downstream than upstream capacity, any significant new application that uses more upstream data is at least worthy of note. It's beginning to look like practical high-quality videoconferencing is actually becoming real on a large scale. Relatively inexpensive USB webcams are now capable of providing excellent quality up to and in some cases exceeding 720p HD rates (at least as initially captured). Various video conferencing programs are beginning to support image sizes at much higher data rates than previously, and with quite solid performance given a fast PC and reasonable bandwidth. I was experimenting in this area over the weekend, and I wonder if we're not finally sitting on the cusp of a drastic expansion in the use of these systems. The webcams are easily affordable to individuals, and some now feature integral microphones that work well enough to make cumbersome headsets finally unnecessary. The move from small, relatively crummy video webcam images to potentially full-screen "HD" versions might have dramatic impacts on users' upstream data usage. Will the Internet be ready to appropriately handle this on a large scale if necessary? I'm not suggesting that everyone will switch to video phone calls. The same old related social factors (who wants to bother looking nice to answer the phone?) have been around since AT&T demonstrated Picturephone service in 1964. But I do sense that we may be approaching a point where relatively massive adoption of this technology by consumers could occur with surprising rapidity. By the way, in my testing, I saw rather amazingly good results with Skype, but had problems with Gmail Video Chat. If anyone in the readership is a regular user of GVC and would be willing to participate in a brief connectivity experiment, please let me know. Thanks. --Lauren-- NNSquad Moderator