iPad 2 Reactions: What does Matt Key of Cable&Wireless Worldwide think?

In light of the iPad2 launch and especially its video calling capabilities, Cable&Wireless Worldwide expects that this will trigger more interest around video conferencing. Matt Key, Managing Director, Enterprise at Cable&Wireless Worldwide predicts that growing consumer demand for video calling will help increase interest from businesses, but in order to deliver on the potential of the technology, a robust network is key.

“Developments such as the iPad2 will see consumers help fuel the demand for video conferencing, prompting businesses to adopt it more widely,” says Matt Key. ”We’ve already seen first hand the growing interest companies have for video conferencing and we expect this trend to continue. The number of video conferencing units being deployed to our customers has increased by 34 per cent over the last six months while internally we use video conferencing extensively, clocking up over 1.2 million minutes across the business in 2010 with usage increasing 36 per cent in the last six months alone.

“There are many advantages to video conferencing. A survey we conducted recently showed that in the UK our concentration and focus on telephone conference calls begins to wane after an average of 23 minutes, but on a video conference call or in a face to face meeting it rockets to 35 minutes.

“Video conferencing is very useful for consumers, and an attractive option for businesses too. Not only does it cut down unnecessary travel, but 87% of people claim face to face contact is more likely to lead to a business decision. Over 46 per cent of all respondents of our survey admitted to checking or writing emails, while on average 43 per cent surf the net, 17 per cent doodle and 11 per cent have even made another phone call while on a telephone conference call.

“Businesses will demand a superior user experience from tablet solutions such as FaceTime; jitter, time delays and dropped packets will not be tolerated and will inhibit mass adoption in the working environment. In addition, business users that adopt video conferencing need to ensure they have resilient connections and interoperable solutions. And none of this would be possible without the improvements that have taken place to the underlying network to accommodate the bandwidth requirements to support video conferencing. Today’s next-generation telecoms networks have the bandwidth and intelligence not only to support video conferencing but also to provide multiple services simultaneously.”

Thank You Matt!