Audio Conference Teleconference

One Vega 200 connected to a corporate LAN lets workgroups of users world-wide view, discuss and alter documents direct from multimedia PCs. New IP telephony company, VegaStream, has recently unveiled a PC audio conference teleconference unit that enables SoHo staff to group-work extremely effectively and inexpensively.

No additional equipment at all is needed at remote sites. One compact Vega 200 PC Audio Conferencing Unit attached to a corporate LAN lets up to 30 independently-located staff share and discuss screen data in real-time, direct from multimedia PCs.

Using Vega 200 no time is wasted faxing and emailing back and forth. Instead, colleagues can collaborate on spreadsheets, Word documents, and graphics or free-form drawings: talking directly into their multimedia PCs whilst viewing and altering data. Conferees can be selected and brought together with the ease of an email system, and can use a single communications channel for data and voice simultaneously.

Vega 200 is a hardware product that works in conjunction with T.120 data conferencing systems like Microsoft's NetMeeting. It reduces unwanted noise such as air- conditioning units; handles DTMF signaling/detection; and provides echo cancellation so there's no voice bounce-back. Effective communications are vital for remote staff; with Vega 200 independently-located staff can feel a seamless part of the organization. Document-based conferences can be set up as easily as sending emails, and documents can be viewed, discussed and amended by anyone within the organization - wherever they are located.

Previously, users would have had to make separate telephone calls to carry the voice element if they wanted to do anything more than a point to-point conference: which, apart from obviously being more expensive, is not always feasible from home or branch offices. Now, one slim Vega 200 unit gives up to 30 people the ability to conference simultaneously. The conferences can be in any combination - 10 three-way conferences, or 6 five-way conferences, for example.

Voices are digitized and packetized within the PC and transferred onto the network as IP packets. Vega 200 then determines which packets contain speech and acts as a voice mixer,: decoding the packets into digital speech streams, equalizing voice levels to a high quality, mixing them, re-packetizing and broadcasting the results to all participants. It connects directly onto Ethernet LANs on the inbound side and ISDN/frame relay links on the outbound side.

Vega Stream was launched in February 1998 with $2.1 million first round venture capital from MTI Partners. The company provides pioneering Internet technology solutions that give real business advantages.

Unusually, the VegaStream range is hardware-based. The company believes history will repeat itself and that in just the same ways as bridges and routers have migrated from PC-based servers to become black boxes, Internet telephony products will also evolve into commodity hardware solutions. VegaStream's management team have the ideal mix of telephony and data experience, with a common vision of an evolving telephony-conferencing market.