Videoconferencing has been under-performing expectations since AT&T unveiled its Picturephone at the 1964 World’s Fair. With each new generation of technology, videoconferencing gets better, and yet, somehow, airplanes get more crowded and business events more plentiful.

What’s wrong with this picture?

Increasingly, there is general agreement that something is very wrong with endless business travel, particularly global travel, that not only pumps tons of carbon dioxide into the air but also cuts into productivity and can be downright aggravating to boot.

Now, major global corporations including Cisco Systems, BT, Hewlett-Packard and others are throwing their weight behind the notion that telepresence is a technology whose time has come.

The beauty of this, from a telecom perspective, is that not only does global teleconferencing represent a lot of extra network traffic -- something not exactly lacking these days -- but the chance for upscale value-added services via managed telepresence offerings.

If this latest version of videoconferencing is to succeed, however, it will have to be easy to use, reasonably priced and reliable -- delaying one executive’s flight is bad but keeping two rooms full of people fuming while the technical glitches are worked out is the road to doom.

These new services also must be easy to sell. Service providers have been honing their expertise at more complex sales with integrated voice-data offerings, as well as managed security and disaster recovery services, but telepresence will take that complexity to a new level.

Market expertise abounds -- there is no shortage of potential partners in the field and they're actively working to court the service provider community.

As risky as it is to say this, given videoconferencing’s history, I think the timing might be right, at last, for this to work.

E-mail me at cwilson3@telephonyonline.com.