Hi from Kalmar, Sweden

[Ingemar]

My name is Ingemar Sandén and I work as PM for flexible learning at Kalmar University, situated in the southeast of Sweden. The university use videoconference a lot for distance learning from the university to municipality owned study centers in the region.
We also use videoconference for business meetings, project work, presentations, information, "open lectures" and so on.
University homepage: www.hik.se Our homepage: www.edit.hik.se

[George]

Welcome to the forums Ingemar,

Do you use a bridging service or do you bridge your own conferences using internal equipment and resources?

[Ingemar]

Hi again,
sorry for late answer.
So far we have used a bridging service from a swedish company (Ementor) but the cost for bridging have grown, great service though. The study centers still use ISDN a lot but from this fall they are migrating to IP. As a university we have no problem with using IP and no bandwith/firewall problems either.
An IP bridge (Tandberg) is leased by some of the study centers starting this month and will be in operation from August (I hope).
Here at the university I am trying to "find" money to invest in a bridge. I have checked out Tandberg 16+16 and Polycom MGC-25 and recently I got info from Codian about their MCU. Which would you go for?
Regards,
Ingemar

[George]

Ingemar,

The staff here tries to stay neutral in terms of recommendations but I'm sure some of our members will have an opinion (or 2) for you ;)

Those 3 that you mentioned would probably be a good selection to stay within when making your choice. By no problems with IP do you mean the University as an entity has no problem or do you physically have the bandwidth?

[Ingemar]

Hi George,
My unit have a good relation with the IT-people at the university and working at a university have the benefit that testing new stuff - as long a it doesn´t cost to much :-)- is no problem. It is a part of developing new methods/techniques for flexible learning and distance work. Of course the university has a good security against hackers.
All swedish universities are connected to each other by a Gigabit backbone and the pipe to Internet is very good.
From my experience I think the IP-connections with universities in the US is often more stabile than connections with a lot of European countries.
/Ingemar

[Kevin]

Hey Ingemar

Welcome to Vtctalk - this place is really turning into a goldmine of knowledge. I'm learning new stuff everyday!

It was good to meet you earlier on our demo unit. I hope you enjoyed using it!

If you do a search for Codian on these forums you will find details of an account I set up on the demostration unit for vtctalk users to use that gives access to more of its features.

Feel free to get in touch if you have any further questions or would like any other features demonstrated.

Kevin