“Video over IP is getting a major boost with the advent of low-cost IP connectivity” said Doug Pidduck, Intermedia's Managing Director. "High usage costs have been a major inhibitor to video conferencing uptake particularly in small and medium-sized companies but cost-savings in the network mean many more enterprises can now consider adopting video conferencing. But it also means they will need quite sophisticated services earlier in their experience of the technology. Services that have, until now, been more associated with large companies. and big budgets".

The new services will include:

- Managed Video conferencing calls. Operator-managed inbound or outbound video calls. Both point-to-point and multipoint, ISDN and/or IP, over any IP network, to any destination.

- Off-network ISDN gateway services. Not all calls will be intra-enterprise or contained within the IP network. Inbound and outbound calls to the public ISDN network will need to be accommodated. Intermedia's service will provide low-cost, unattended or operator-managed gateway calls from any IP network provider onto clean and highly reliable Tier-1 Telco access to the public ISDN network.

- Collocation Services. The most efficient location for bandwidth-hungry network infrastructure is collocated alongside the network itself. Putting a multipoint controller unit (MCU) and/or Gateway on the company premises calls for big and expensive data pipes from the local loop provider. This can be avoided by housing the equipment next to the network in a so-called collocation site. Intermedia will provide collocation facilities and services for video equipment in North America, Europe and China while offering Intermedia's own bridge and gateway capacity for redundancy and overflow support.

- Network Peering. Connecting IP calls between private networks is tricky but if you need to call another subsidiary or an overseas office on a different network, until now users were faced with linking the networks using ISDN. And IP network service providers don't go out of their way to make it any easier because they want their client to consolidate traffic on their network - not spread it across their competitor's. Intermedia can provide QoS network peering services to help their clients out of that trap.

- Bridge and Gateway Management. Intermedia also offer management of collocated or premises-based infrastructure equipment on behalf of the client keeping their technical overhead to a minimum and ensuring trouble-free operation of these complex components.

High Quality-of-Service (QoS) International IP Networks. Once the preserve of the super-rich corporations, private, international IP connections are now becoming affordable for much smaller businesses. However, legacy backbone circuits employed by many of the traditional carriers cannot deliver the QoS needed for reliable video conferencing. Intermedia, through its partnership with major network carriers employing state-of-the-art MPLS backbones, can provide end-to-end MPLS circuits around the world at prices that will cost-justify themselves simply by getting the majority of video conferencing calls off expensive ISDN.

"Many of our clients looking for video conferencing solutions for the first time or extending early use need to make the savings inherent in IP video for it to be viable" adds Doug Pidduck. "But, not surprisingly, they find many of the issues raised by video-over-IP daunting. They are delighted to find that Intermedia are ahead of their needs and have all the answers addressed often before they have formed the questions".

Video conferencing calls historically were carried over ISDN circuits and involved making six or more ISDN connections to provide sufficient bandwidth for high-quality business video calls. These calls proved expensive (because so many circuits were required and the historically high cost of ISDN calls) and unreliable (due to the multiple circuits and also multiple carriers involved in international calls).

The unreliable nature of the networks made a significant contribution to a poor early user experience leading to under-utilisation of equipment and slow usage growth. Intermedia's new range of services is designed to meet all the needs of clients embarking on or developing their use of video conferencing over a private IP network and are aimed at delivering a first-class user experience on every call while, at the same time, lowering the cost of ownership.

Intermedia Communication Solutions are a specialist provider of video conferencing, video communications and conference calling services. Intermedia serves clients throughout Europe, the Middle East, India and Africa as well as the USA. Services include business needs analysis, network design, technology selection, procurement assistance, project management, user training and change process support. More information about Intermedia video conferencing services may be found at www.intermedia-cs.co.uk.