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Videoconferencing - Is it more cost effective to own or to hire? A lot has been said recently about the benefits of videoconferencing, even Trevor Manuel has ordered Government employees to make use of videoconferencing as much as possible. The problem is that your company doesn't have a videoconferencing system, but you would like to make use of the technology. You can either purchase a system, or you can make use of third party videoconferencing venues that charge by the hour for you to make use of their facilities. Not all companies have the capital available to make an outright purchase of a videoconferencing system, which then leaves the option of making use of videoconferencing bureaus. Making use of videoconferencing venues is most likely far more cost- and time-effective than travel. Although, while it may seem that it is more cost effective to hire a venue, it may well be that leasing a system may very well save you a lot of hard earned cash at the end of the day. If you are making use of an independent venue for more than 2 hours a month, you may find that its actually cheaper to 'rent-to-own' your own system than to hire the venue.
Venue Hire vs Rent-to-Own The typical costs associated with hiring an external videoconferencing venue range between R800 to R1500 per hour for the basic room hire, depending on the features offered to the client. An additional scheduling fee may also be applied to bookings. At this stage, most venues operate on ISDN lines, which means that in addition to the booking charges, you will also have to pay for the calls (at a handsome mark-up). So, with call costs included two hours of venue hire per month will set you back in the region of R2,900 to R3,900 per month. Compare this to the cost of leasing a brand new, high resolution videoconferencing system (complete with a 42” HD LCD Screen). A solution like this would only cost you in the region of about R3,000 per month (on a 36 month rent-to-own basis). This means that at the end of the contract, you will own your very own videoconferencing system, without having paid any more than you would have for making use of someone else's system! What about the call charges? With the advent of improved bandwidth over ADSL lines (and the bandwidth we are promised for the future), it is now perfectly possible to conduct high-quality videoconferences over ADSL instead of ISDN, which is far more cost effective. A monthly 4Mbps ADSL line with a 10GB data cap costs around R1000 per month. This will allow you to conduct 256kbps videoconference calls for 45 hours per month, no matter where you are videoconferencing to. ISDN call costs for this same amount of hours of videoconferencing (within SA only) would cost in the region of R 10,800 per month! An additional benefit of owning a system is that you have it at your disposal any time of the day (or night). You won't need to reserve the system, as it is your own and the longer your videoconferences last, the more you are actually saving. What's even better is that you don't need to drive or fly anywhere; after all, isn't that what videoconferencing is all about?
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