Cisco this week is expected to launch its long-anticipated video communications technology - a combination of life-size displays and high-definition IP video designed to let customers replace in-person meetings with long-distance virtual powwows.

With the technology costing $250,000 a room and requiring 15Mbps of bandwidth, however, it remains to be seen whether only the largest companies have the budgets and capacity to embrace it. Some industry watchers say telepresence products will never get beyond being a niche IT luxury for a rarified group of executives. Plus, Cisco is entering the market almost 12 months behind other telepresence competitors such as HP, which already has claimed customers PepsiCo, Dreamworks and chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices.

Cisco CEO John Chambers has hinted about the company's telepresence effort over the last nine months in interviews and at industry events.

"Video communications is the most effective way to communicate," he said at the Interop Conference in Las Vegas in May. "If you ask me what excites me the most . . . I'll say it's telepresence - the ability to interface with customers [all around the world] in a way that's not just about videoconferencing."

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He is excited specifically about the Cisco TelePresence 1000 and TelePresence 3000 systems, expected to launch this week. The high end of these multicomponent packages has three 65-inch high-definition plasma displays, an appliance that combines a high-resolution IP video camera, echo cancellation, four-channel IP audio- and IP video-encoding hardware and software, and network connectivity.

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The 3000 system even includes a specially built half table, designed to look like a large oval ring when it's combined with the plasma screens, which show an identical setting on the other side of the conference room. Cisco also has specifications for the room's background color and lighting.

"We're even in the furniture business now," says Randy Harrell, director of product marketing for Cisco's TelePresence group, which is one of the company's Emerging Technologies business units.