cing to terrestrial transmission-the T in T-1 means terrestrial. As a result, the transmission costs associated with videoconferencing plummeted. In 1984, CLI began to face competition from a Massachusetts company named PictureTel. A team of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) engineering students and their professor founded PictureTel (Danvers, Massachusetts). The group had invested a great deal of time researching low-bandwidth digital video signal processing. After a lot of trial and error, they developed a way to reduce the bandwidth requirement for transmitting an acceptable-quality videoconference to an amazing 224 Kbps-the equivalent of four telephone lines. Overnight, group-system videoconferencing became economical at low data rates. PictureTel's product was the first software-based videoconferencing system to become commercially available. It became the cornerstone of a planned migration from a build-your-own product to an integrated system in which a single chassis included all necessary components. CLI responded with a similar product, the race began, and the two firms began grappling for control of an exploding market. While the two were busy working magic in their laboratories, a third company, VTEL (formerly VideoTelecom Corporation) challenged the competition. Founded in 1985, VTEL was the first company to offer a videoconferencing product that ran on a DOS- based PC. For the first time, customers could upgrade their videoconferencing systems by simply downloading new sets of manufacturer-provided floppy disks. In 1980, only a few companies knew how to code and compress a video signal to affordable bandwidths. Manufacturers produced codecs at a rate of 100 per year. Today, software-only codecs are more powerful than the best 1980 model, which required a refrigerator-sized cabinet. These software-based codecs are now standard enhancements to personal computers. Because they are standards-based, they enable any-to-any communications, regardless of the platform on which they run. FROM THE BOA