Video conferencing and desktop video communications: an update

Although the visual aspect is important for communication between humans, the most common form of communications for separated humans, telephony, has no visual component. In recent years, advances in video compression have made video telephony possible from specialized rooms but, until recently, expensive and inconvenient. Decreasing costs and technical advances are now bringing video telephony into the office in both digital and analog form. Video telephony, coupled with collaborative computing, now provides a more complete technical capability for office-to-office communications. The near future should make video telephony common and productive.