Marc-Alexis Remond, Global Director, Government Solutions & Market Development, Polycom talked to Prashant L Rao about how video conferencing could facilitate the government’s role, help citizens benefit from government services even in remote areas and H.264 High Profile, a protocol that ups the resolution for a given bandwidth pipe
What’s critical for the government is its role throughout the country to ensure that policies are clear, public servants are trained accordingly and so forth. In the Asia-Pacific and around the world, a lot of governments have invested in video conferencing to save cost and as a way to improve governance in areas of making people aware by communicating.
The shift that we have seen that governments are saying that we are adopting this technology but the people should benefit from it. How do we leverage the infrastructure that we have in place and make it available to the people. In South Korea, which is ranked the number one e-government worldwide as per the UN, the government is going to be extending video conferencing services to the farming and fishing communities providing services in areas of health and welfare. There is a Department of Agriculture in South East Asia that has branch offices around the country and it has decided to open their own office to the fishermen and farmers. By doing so, they will allow these citizens to interact with traders or eventually buyers in the capital.
For video conferencing, connectivity must be there, 28 SWANs have been completed in India. Meanwhile we have integrated a new standard protocol called H.264 High Profile. What High Profile does is to compress the video by 50% for the same resolution. If you are looking at 720p at 30 fps, which is basic HD, any other vendor would require 1 Mbps. Because of this protocol, we only need 512 Kbps. H.264 High Profile also works on standard definition. If you normally need 256 Kbps for that, we make do with 128. So, if you have 512 Kbps at some CSCs, you have the ability to bring video all the way there.
What’s your strategy to deliver video conferencing to far flung areas?
We have a strategy around Video-as-a-Service and we work with service providers like Tulip in India and, as part of their offering, they provide immersive Telepresence and HD VC-as-a-Service (VCaaS) from the Cloud; they offer access, bandwidth and services around it based on an OPEX model, which becomes more affordable for some government departments. We also work with RCOM in wireless VC where they bundle their 3G offering with some of our equipment so that they can bring video further.
How do you see tablets fitting into the whole UC/VC picture?
We see government departments around the world providing tablets to their personnel. We are talking about hospitals providing tablets so that the nurse or doctor can access EMRs. It’s very easy to add VC capabilities to this. In education, tablets are being provided to students so that they can have access to e-learning content. Today, we have educational institutions using our technology. In defense, the Singapore Defense Force announced a year back that they would provide iPads to their National Servicemen. Again it’s easy to add VC capability to an iPad. The US DoD is trying iPhone or Smartphone apps for warfare. Soldiers will be equipped with smartphones going forward. They are integrating geolocation apps, tactical systems. These will be made available on commercial systems.
We offer video calling, multi-party VC and the ability to share content on tablets and smartphones.
How do you see the use of video conferencing evolving in the government sector?
We see a concept that’s shaping up in Australia, some states in India and in the US. In these countries, the state is responsible for civil services, education, health, public safety and security. Different government departments within a state get together to build a video Cloud service that will be shared. In rural areas, they set up a community or citizen service center where you can go to avail of e-governance services as well as video conferencing with government officials, vocational training, telemedicine etc. We also see, more in the US, justice services whereby a citizen can go to a center to either have access to legal counsel. In many countries, correctional facilities are located far away making it hard for their families to visit them. This is why governments are offering VCaaS. In the area of public safety, government departments in India are using immersive TP for situation rooms for emergency and crisis management. We have the ability to bring in satellite, CCTV, helicopter and helmet camera images on the one hand and TV channels on the other.