Senior executive claims that small businesses won't adopt videoconferencing until their attitudes change towards online etiquette and the environment

Demand for videoconferencing capabilities from BT's small-business customers will continue to be low for now, a senior executive at the telco has told ZDNet.co.uk.

Speaking on Tuesday, BT's general manager of broadband, VoIP and software services, Chris Lindsay, said that acceptance of videoconferencing would eventually come about as a result of concern for the environment and the development of new social norms. However, Lindsay said that despite the fact BT does offer videoconferencing applications, demand among SMEs remains low for now.

"When we talk to customers, if they've got an audio conference, whiteboards and shared applications, then the addition of video over and above that doesn't add tremendous amounts to their experience," said Lindsay. "When a customer is in a video conference you have to learn new rules of social etiquette. It's not just a technological thing — it's a social and cultural issue. Customers are not seeing the increased benefit from having the visual piece over and above the audio."

Some communications companies are placing a lot of stock in a potential videoconferencing boom, citing a desire to cut down on travel as a major motivator for their multinational clients. One notable example is Cisco, whose high-end TelePresence equipment and software suite is being resold to large corporations by service providers including BT itself.

However, Lindsay suggested that, while most SMEs also have a green policy, most approaches are based on schemes such as recycling, rather than cutting down on travel. "We are seeing a growing number of multinational SMEs, and they still do a significant amount of travelling to set up [their business]. So far they have been content with the rest of the collaboration tools they have got. At the end of the day, if a guy is working with a supplier in China, he's going to go out and meet that person. That's how business is culturally done at the moment."

"The environmental issues will have an impact over time, but the more useful trend which will help this market is the use of [videoconferencing] in social contexts," Lindsay continued. "The younger generation today are spending much of their time on IM or voice conferencing with webcams. It's more about us using it a social tool and understanding how to use it as a social tool rather than whether the technology can deliver a particular quality. At some point those two trends will converge; then it definitely will take off."

BT is currently focusing more on its VoIP services, which will soon see an improvement in quality, said Lindsay. "We expect to be rolling out a quality of service layer in the early part of 2008. What that means is that where customers are using our voice services over our broadband, then the voice traffic will be prioritised," he added, while claiming that the quality of the VoIP call will be as good as today's PSTN call. Lindsay also described BT's current infrastructure for unified communications — including VoIP, videoconferencing and IPTV — as "probably good enough for those people that are using it today".

The telco launched a new IP Centrex-hosted VoIP service for its SME customers this week. Geared towards offices of up to 10 employees, the service offers PBX-style functionality for a £40 setup fee and £5 per end-user per month.

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