Vox takes aim at video conferencing market « Broadcasting « MyBroadband Tech and IT News

Tom Manners

July 25, 2011

Vox Telecoms has officially announced the release of a dedicated teleconferencing platform – Vox Pureview

Local telecoms operator Vox Telecoms has officially introduced a dedicated video conferencing division, known as Vox Pureview.

Although the company is well known for its focus on the video conferencing market, particularly with products such as Vox Eyeris, Vox Pureview focuses solely on the widespread support of this technology with a strong focus on small to medium (SME) clients.

Significantly, Vox Pureview will enable users to access teleconferencing facilities on a number of platforms including Apple’s iPhone and iPad. Support for BlackBerry and Android devices will also be delivered in coming months. Vox Pureview also supports a wide array of legacy hardware.

In addition, the technology also offers Scopia support. This allows users access to a suite of applications developed by Radvision which offer video conferencing, content sharing and presentations on widely accepted video conferencing equipment, tablet PCs, cellular handsets, desktop and laptop computers.

Price Barrier

Although teleconferencing is not new to the South African business market, price was a significant barrier for small to medium businesses, said executive head of the division, Gene van der Walt. “Very few businesses can afford to spend a million Rand on a state of the art boardroom. Vox Pureview is the obvious solution because it can be tailored according to individual business needs.”

To combat this, Vox has made Pureview available on a rental contract should customers prefer this. In this instance, businesses rent the relevant teleconferencing equipment needed to meet their needs on a fixed term basis.

Key to the challenge of pricing structures is Vox Pureview’s hosted solution, which allows businesses to access advanced teleconferencing services without having to invest in costly network bridging infrastructure. Through this, clients can connect with remote branches or customers through the Vox bridge infrastructure, without compromising security.

This offering is particularly cost effective. Customers can set up a ‘virtual room environment’ for a once off set up fee of R2,500 coupled with a monthly subscription of R250. According to van der Walt, usage is billed per hour. “An SD (standard definition) call of one hour, which would be suitable for most businesses, is billed at R150. This means that executives can have weekly meetings for roughly R850 a month excluding set up fees.”

Users who do not have access to the Vox Pureview offering will also be able to take part in teleconferencing sessions through the use of meeting requests facilitated by Scopia. These prompt the receiver to download the software and insert the correct information to join the meeting.

Security

When questioned regarding the benefit of Vox Pureview over a free video conferencing service such as Skype, van der Walt stressed that Vox offers “the kind of security that Skype simply does not”. Vox Pureview is also supported by 128 bit encryption security through Scopia.

As an added benefit, Vox has partnered with Smart Technologies to supply interactive whiteboards which integrate with the Pureview platform. This allows any information that may have been edited during the session to be sent to all participants upon conclusion.

In addition, users have the option to record all teleconferencing activity that takes place through Vox Pureview to be viewed at a later stage.