Cisco cuts costs of Umi home videoconferencing

Cisco Systems acted to make its Umi home videoconferencing platform more affordable on Monday, slashing the service cost to $US99 per year and announcing a $399 product for slower Internet connections as then as free Mac and PC customers.

The new $399 Umi system delivers resolution as high as 720p and is designed to work on a home broadband connection with 1.5M bps downstream and upstream speed. By comparison, the original unit offers 1080p resolution and is intended for 3.5M bps symmetric broadband, a service that relatively few U.S. consumers have in their homes. Both can adapt to slower speeds, Cisco says. Cisco as well cut the price of the 1080p product on Monday, to $499. The new service price, available in a $9.95-per-month option as so then as the annual fee, is the same for both hardware platforms.

Demand for the less expensive offerings came from current Umi clients who want to be able to enjoy videoconferences with friends and family who may not be able to afford the original product or don't have the high-speed Internet access it uses, said Gina Clark, vice president and general manager of Cisco's Consumer TelePresence Business Unit.

Also on Monday, Cisco announced it is making Umi interoperate with its enterprise TelePresence systems. The main purpose of this is not teleworking, Clark said. For that, Cisco after all recommends enterprise offerings just as its desktop TelePresence product for about $300, which has more features for sharing information, she said. Instead, enterprises in areas just as education and health care wanted this compatibility so they could conduct immersive communication sessions with consumers. Health-care applications are in trials nevertheless, Clark said.

Stephen Lawson covers mobile, storage and networking technologies for The IDG News Service. Follow Stephen on Twitter at @sdlawsonmedia. Stephen's e-mail address is stephen_lawson@idg.com