Of all the gadgets and devices on exhibit at the 1964 New York World’s Fair, the “video phone” was among the most compelling. It not only transmitted voices but also the faces and bodies that went along with them. This was something that had intrigued visionaries and young people alike ever since Alexander Graham Bell’s time. More recently, no doubt, some of the adult fair-goers recalled the 1960 presidential election debates that were televised internationally, Indeed, some of them may have ended-up voting for John F. Kennedy rather than his older opponent Richard M. Nixon because of the younger man’s pleasing TV image. Kennedy won the election, and that outcome changed the United States for generations to come, including how television allied with telecommunications companies via the Internet, especially what came to be known as the World Wide Webb. One of those new companies, “start-ups” they were called, was National Semiconductor Corporation. This Austin start-up, like Secure Digital Communications, transformed the entire Central Texas region and the state of Texas as a whole. Austin Community College found itself in the middle of all the the excitement being generated by instantaneous, two-way audio and video communication.
In the spring of 1995, technicians employed by VideoCall, another Austin video-conferencing startup, arranged to use ACC’s television studio located in the Pinnacle Campus on Highway 290, just west of Oak Hill to as part of an international chain of 60 studios in New York, joined with other studios in Tokyo and Moscow to produce broadcast quality audio and video teleconferencing. The prices for video conferencing began at $750 per hour for two-way video and audio connections. That was steep all right, and satellite hookups were available, but they were rather primitive, offering only two-way audio hookups but no two-way video. Market conditions favored developers like Ron Brey, ACC’s dean of distance learning, who managed ACC’s used VideoCall for Distance Learning. Teleconferencing through VideoCall allowed the interviewer to see the person being interviewed as well as the other way around, making for less awkward, more productive, sessions. VideoCall transmissios were less troubled by noise interference Moreover, VideoCall did not broadcast data via radio-frequency transmissions the way some other conferencing did. Anyone with a properly-configured 486 computer processor could compress analog signals into much narrower digital ones that took up less bandwidth along fiber-optic transmission lines by filtering out noise. Another advantage of VideoCall’s technology was cost, which was significantly cheaper than flying teams of technicians and other critical employees hundreds of miles via airplane and paying not only for plane tickets but also for meals and overnight stays. Furthermore, with VideoCall, participants all along the hook-up could hear and see everyone else participating in a conversation. Previously, in teleconferencing, the interviewer could see and hear the person being interviewed but not the other way around, creating a certain awkwardness. ACC and VideoCall were helping to change the rules for video conferencing thanks to Austin Community College.
This became a boon to Austin-area high-tech industries that employed scores or even more highly skilled technicians and managers who normally companies with branch facilities and employees scattered scattered over great swatches of the state would have to pay for facilities for educational or training seminars. By the end of ACC’s first year of providing teleconferencing, fifteen Texas agencies had utilized ACC teleconferencing, and although ACC offered its facilities only to government agencies, Ron Brey noted that nothing prevented ACC from offering its facilities to private companies. Mostly, ACC used the facilities to operate Star Link, a statewide network of community and technical college sites.
Source: Austin American-Statesman, Newsbank.com, August 29,1994, and March 29, 1995.