oriented video communication system. British Telecom (BT), another pioneer, introduced its own version of a video communication system shortly thereafter. BT persuaded various state-owned European telephone companies to conduct An Introduction to Video Communications country-to-country video communication trials by creating facilities and availing them to the public. The efforts to render these public rooms operational paved the way for today's video communication interoperability standards. Early video communication systems used television technology in its raw, analog form. The inability of networks to provide adequate bandwidth delayed progress in the area of digital transmission. It was not until the early 1980s, when low-cost, large- scale solid-state memory became available, that video communication advances began in earnest. The key was to store picture information during the processing sequence. Once very large scale integration (VLSI) technology appeared, it videoconferencing pioneers harnessed it with amazing results. The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which wanted an inexpensive, small-profile system, commissioned one early video communication project. The resulting product, Widcom, used VLSI to aggregate large numbers of circuits on a single chip. The approach reduced the required bandwidth for image transmission to the digital equivalent of a telephone line. Unfortunately, transmitting a single image from this powerful system took too much time and Widcom, which launched in 1983, faded into obscurity for lack of a commercial application. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the installation of a corporate video communication network required a leap of faith. At that time, the substitution paradigm, or paying for video communication with travel costs avoided, served as the basis for most video communication business cases. Unfortunately, the cost of a system was $250,000-and that bought only the codec. The codec is the heart of a videoconferencing system. A codec adapts audiovisua