In a recent interview with Telephony online’s Carol Wilson, I heard her articulate a term I had not heard in a long time: “a rising tide lifts all boats.” It’s rather an appropriate term for the growing real-time video space. As I wrote in my post last week, video communications traffic is set to increase tenfold by 2013 – according to Cisco. Given that situation, bandwidth could become an issue for consumers, service providers and application developers who may well be interested in ensuring their video usage is both optimal for their networks and usage.

While the number of video conferencing and video application products out in the market is increasing (whether it’s peer-to-peer or multiparty video conferencing) it will benefit all of the industry players involved, as usage grows- hence the term ‘a rising tide lifts all boats.’

As more users increase their experience and familiarity with video conversations, it will become a more common everyday-experience, both in the workplace and home. This has already started to happen with a younger generation entering the workforce who is accustomed to communicating with instant message text, VoIP calls and video.

However, in conjunction with this shift it will not be long before end users become far more discerning. For those businesses that offer a sub-par video experience it will not be long before customers migrate to a better solution. (So, yes look out for GIPS supported video)

I liken it to the iPhone experience – a mobile phone was just that for most consumers until Apple entered the market. The user experience and the quality of the experience pushed Apple’s competition to offer consumers better smartphones in general, especially as customers were migrating to AT&T – the exclusive US provider for iPhone. Growth has been explosive for the iPhone – it has generated increasing data revenue for AT&T. Last quarter alone, AT&T wireless data revenues were up nearly 40 percent to $3.2 billion.

So as the video experience improves, whether it’s on a personal computer or a mobile phone watch for the migration to the best quality experience.

Tags: Cisco, ISP, Video Conferencing, VoIP

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