VidyoConferencing by Phone: Simple, Low-Cost Participation When Broadband Access Is Not Available
Hackensack, NJ – March 23, 2010 – Vidyo®, Inc., the first company to deliver personal telepresence, today introduced a new service that connects any land-line telephone or mobile phone with a Vidyo conference, allowing “voice only” users to join a Vidyo conference even if they don’t have access to a computer or a broadband connection. The VidyoVoice™ service, which requires no added equipment for the end-user, will be available through Vidyo channel partners in 39 countries.
“We want to make sure that Vidyo conferences become the default way to communicate, and without having voice access this is hard to achieve,” said Ofer Shapiro, Vidyo’s CEO and co-founder. “To date, voice and video integration on smaller installations have been cumbersome, expensive and not intuitive. VidyoVoice makes it all easy – no reservations and no facility-based equipment required. The system just sends out a simple email that includes options to join the conference either online, via a video link or by phone, via a specified number to call.”
The VidyoVoice Service
The highly scalable VidyoVoice service allows voice-only participants to join Vidyo conferences via their wireline, VoIP or mobile phones. For a low, fixed annual fee, customers achieve universal multi-line voice access to Vidyo conferences without the expense or hassle of hardware-based, on-premise solutions. The VidyoVoice service, available soon through Vidyo channel partners, requires no additional equipment; Vidyo provides a dedicated local or toll-free phone number that each customer gives its employees to access the meeting by phone. Once greeted by the auto-attendant, the user then inputs the number of the Vidyo conference he or she wants to reach. Auto-attendant greetings can be customized or companies can use the pre-recorded default greeting.
The Vidyo Difference: Next Generation Video Conferencing
Vidyo’s videoconferencing solution delivers high definition (HD) multi-point performance over the Internet from standard Macs and PCs, utilizing software-enabled ports on its VidyoRouter. Vidyo’s unique architecture, built from the ground up, is the first in a new generation of software solutions that leverages the H.264 Scalable Video Coding (SVC) video compression standard. This allows VidyoConferencing to easily scale, servicing thousands of collaborators for a fraction of the cost of competitors’ solutions. Legacy MCU-based solutions do not scale well since they are hardware limited, require costly QoS enhanced lines to achieve mediocre performance, and are heavily laden with up front equipment expense.
Pricing and Availability
VidyoVoice will be available through Vidyo channel partners worldwide starting April 15, 2010. An annual subscription fee of $600 includes 750 minutes per month and up to 10 people can call in via a single number, eliminating the need to book a parallel audio conference. Additional subscription plans are available to provide voice access for larger conferences. A cost of $25 per additional 1000 minutes is usable anytime during the subscription period.
Vidyo is currently demonstrating VidyoVoice and the entire product line of VidyoConferencing™ solutions at VoiceCon in Orlando, Florida, Booth # 731, March 22 – 25, 2010.