Companies may worry that confidential data is being copied to portable hard drives through USB or FireWire. A flat ban on portable media players would be an extreme, unwelcome measure and does not solve security problems. Try locking down USB devices to read-only status or improving desktop security.
All convergence, video and audio technologies share the same weak spots--bandwidth and latency. We have barely enough bandwidth for video. A high-quality video stream uses a minimum of 300 Kbps, while videoconferencing can go as high as 1 Mbps. Most broadband connections are between 384 Kbps and 768 Kbps upstream. If you're running a videoconference through it, you won't be able to do much else with the connection, let alone provide Internet or IP telephony access to a branch office. Audio isn't as extreme. Theoretically you can stream audio with just a modem connection. Compression technologies have now made many multimedia technologies acceptable, although everyone still wants bigger, brighter images and louder sound. The newest buzzwords are "high-definition videoconferencing," which will require at least 1 Mbps.
Although bandwidth usage has increased, so have our WAN connections. ISDN was the conventional delivery method for site-to-site videoconferencing. It offered stable bandwidth availability, predictable latency, small jitter--and a high price tag. We suspect DSL and cable broadband services will replace most ISDN links. ISDN is still king, but IP conferencing is growing at a much faster rate and will dominate in a few years as broadband services improve. Broadband connections are cheaper and offer more than enough bandwidth, by themselves, for videoconferencing. This is an especially attractive solution if you use a PSTN bridge for the audio part of the conference. Lost audio segments are worse in a virtual meeting session than the occasional video dropout.
The biggest problem with DSL and cable-modem Internet connections is unpredictability. Streaming technologies, such as VoIP and live media streams, require stable latency and bandwidth. DSL should offer better service than cable, because it has dedicated bandwidth in the last mile instead of shared neighborhood access. But the bottleneck is more upstream with the ISP, not in the last mile. Forget the DSL-versus-cable debate. Choose a company with a more reliable network or better customer service. Bufferable data, such as PC screen sharing or viewing prerecorded media, handle jitter and spikes better than streamed data. You won't be able to overcome the Internet's unpredictability as you can on dedicated circuits. The best QoS (quality of service) technology in the world won't help after data leaves your domain.
Subsea cable alternatives can provide a level of comfort for those concerned about disruptions. Realistically, they will continue to play a small, but critical role in the short term.
Maintaining existing network infrastructures often incurs huge technical debt before newer technologies are adopted over time.
Amid ongoing regional uncertainties, telecom infrastructure in the Middle East has expand to include terrestrial low-latency network infrastructure, which offers resilience and agility in navigating political complexities without relying solely on undersea networks.
