Traditional video conferencing typically falls short of supporting interpersonal communications. It can be complex to set up and run, offers unsatisfactory audio-visual quality, and frustrates users.

Fredrik Thunberg, Product Marketing Manager for Enterprise Applications at Ericsson, says: "ViPr is a high-end, real-time collaboration solution with TV-quality images and hi-fi audio. It's the next best thing to being there yourself."

The legal system in some countries is already employing ViPr for court hearings, while medical organizations and emergency services are using it for remote clinical treatment and teaching - pioneering the concepts of tele-justice and tele-medicine.

Police in Crawford County, the US, can now spend more time protecting citizens and less time escorting prisoners to and from the courthouse. Prisoners still get their 'day in court' via ViPr, but with fewer logistical and scheduling problems. 

Crawford County Court's decision to switch from traditional video conferencing to ViPr was cemented by the quality of its video and the system's ability to maintain synchronization between the video and audio streams.

John Shuttleworth, court administrator at Crawford County Court, says:  "A judge must assess the manner of the individual standing before the court. If the video shows the person's lips moving and no sound coming out of the person's mouth, the judge feels he or she may be missing something important.

"With ViPr, our judges are more comfortable assessing the manner of the individual they see on the screen. They don't feel as if they are missing any facial expressions or nuance of speech."

ViPr represents a leap forward for organizations wanting unified communications - consistent, holistic, integrated communications that can also work with legacy systems and help boost employee efficiency.

Thunberg says technology advances have really transformed the video conferencing experience. "In the 1990s, the technology was basic and a lack of standards hampered the widespread uptake of video conferencing. Now, the technology is in place, so stable, consistent and robust real-time collaboration is a reality," he says.

ViPr is a natively SIP-based (Session Initiation Protocol), easy-to-deploy, easy-to-use solution. It allows up to 100 users to communicate via high-quality video and audio over a corporate LAN or WAN, and collaborate in real time, with speeds ranging from 3Mbps down to 128Kbps - essential on narrowband connections. Using multicast technology, video and voice is broadcast to all ViPr terminals participating in a conference, eliminating the need for a video conferencing bridge in the network.

It also enables each user to compose their own screen layout, using the ViPr touch screen to drag and drop windows on their terminal. Additional video streams can be added, allowing users to view PC screen shots that can be captured and pushed to other participants, and tap into services such as CNN or Reuters.