The PRWIRE Press Releases

ACT Teleconferencing announces year end 2002 results

2003-03-31T13:00:00Z

ACT Teleconferencing, Inc. (Nasdaq-ACTT), a leading independent worldwide provider of audio, video, data and web-based conferencing products and services, has announced results for the fourth quarter and year ending December 31, 2002.
Peter Eeles, Asia Pacific Managing Director, ACT Teleconferencing, said, In the Asia Pacific area, we are experiencing a steady increasing demand for our video and audio conferencing services with revenues continuing to grow at double digits.
Globally, revenues grew by 17 per cent to US$14.7 million for the fourth quarter of 2002 and by 15 per cent to US$53.8 million for the year ended December 31, 2002, as compared to the same periods in 2001. The share price jumped 25 per cent on the news. The company continues to make steady progress in reducing costs and improving volumes, efficiency and productivity.
In Asia Pacific, the transition of ACTs product mix from fully-attended audio conferencing to ACTs automated service (ReadyConnectSM) continued through 2002, with the division experiencing dramatically increased volume growth in this sector. Lower prices accompanied the transition to automated conferencing, and consequently lowered the revenue growth rate for the year.
Despite this lower growth rate, we are now achieving higher gross margins from automated services due to lower operating costs, said Eeles. We believe the automated market still has significant growth ahead of it, and we intend to continue growing these revenues in the future. Saying this, we remain very focused on our high touch attended conferencing solutions for specialist applications, such as education and company announcements.
In the area of videoconferencing, Eeles maintains the biggest challenge continues to be reducing excess network and operating costs. We were quite successful this year in eliminating excess network costs, although more work remains to be done in 2003, he said.
Eeles concluded that the outlook for 2003 offered genuine opportunities for the Asia Pacific region. We have one of the broadest product offerings in a growing teleconferencing market, a global presence combined with the AT&T outsource contract and one of the lowest cost operators relative to competitors, Eeles said. Against these opportunities, we need to balance the risks of high revenue concentration, industry pricing pressure, and our ability to maintain the highest quality of service in the face of potentially staggering volume increases.
For full details of 2003 results go to http://www.acttel.com/site/1/press_263.htm.
-ENDS
About ACT Teleconferencing
ACT Teleconferencing, Inc. (Nasdaq-ACTT) is a leading independent worldwide provider of audio, video and web-based conferencing products and services. Established in 1990, ACT Teleconferencing provides unmatched coverage around the world with 15 service delivery centres and sales offices in nine countries.
ACT is the only conferencing company with integrated global audio and video conferencing platforms that provide uniform international services, uniform billing and local language services.
ACT's comprehensive suite of applications enable organisations to collaborate with customers, team members, investors and employees locally as well as globally for increased productivity, lower travel expenses and more efficient communications. ACT technology and custom-built applications enable organisations to reach their communication goals around the globe with ease.
For the third year in a row, ACT has been named to Deloitte & Touches Fast 500 program, a ranking of the 500 fastest growing technology companies sin the USA.
ACT Teleconferencing clients in Australia include Compaq, National Meat Federation, ABN Amro, University of Queensland, CSR, AMP, Woolworths, Westfields, Lend Lease, Ernst & Young, Arnotts and KPMG.
For more information about ACT Teleconferencing visit the company's website at www.acttel.com

Video conferencing usage charges set to tumble by more than 50%

2003-03-24T18:45:00Z

The Australian subsidiary of ACT Teleconferencing, Inc. (Nasdaq-ACTT), a leading independent worldwide provider of audio, video, data and web-based conferencing products and services, has thrown down the gauntlet and launched the most cost-effective videoconferencing solutions available in Australia.
Because of the strong relationships that the ACT holds with some of the worlds leading carriers, it has negotiated significantly lower pricing for the ISDN requirements associated with videoconferencing. The announcement will have a profound impact on the take up of videoconferencing for business productivity gains in Australia.
The company is supporting the launch of this initiative with aggressive marketing activity. Full pricing models will be available late March. Stage one, focusing on reduced international videoconferencing offerings is being followed by stage two, where the Australian market will be able to enjoy dramatically reduced inter-state videoconferencing alternatives from ACT.
For the last 15 years, there has been a virtual monopoly in the ISDN market here, said Peter Eeles, Asia Pacific Managing Director, ACT Teleconferencing. And, more surprisingly, ISDN pricing has basically stood still since the late 80s. Were talking pricing levels up to four to five times higher than what other ISDN providers offer the global market.
Eeles has announced savings of over 50 per cent in videoconferencing services involving links with other countries. We have leveraged economies of scale through ACTs global relationships with the worlds leading carriers and can now pass this onto our Australian customers.
Eeles gives the example of a videoconference meeting taking place between Sydney, Hong Kong, Singapore, UK and USA offices, run out of Australia, currently attracts an ISDN cost of approximately $1,274.00 for one hour at 128 kbit/s. ACT can offer the same videoconference links up to 50% or more off the current price because of its capability to utilise ACTs global platform and leverage the ISDN costs from providers other than Telstra.
ACT has access to multiple conference platforms over a dozen locations globally. From our Australian operations centres, we can activate a call from any of our platforms around the world, said Eeles.
Over the last 18 months, the move towards IP in the videoconferencing world has been widely publicised. I believe this is due not so such to IP as the technology driver, rather it is as a result of shunning the usage costs associated with videoconferencing specifically the ISDN component, says Eeles.
Recent years have seen videoconferencing end point hardware come down in price dramatically. What has not moved (since the 80s) has been the price of ISDN it has not kept pace with the decrease in pricing experienced with other technologies. This has naturally forced the user to explore IP technology to reduce videoconferencing usage costs, says Eeles. But users need to consider that other issues arise with the adoption of IP as the videoconferencing platform. These include Quality of Service, investment capital required, upgrading of WANs and LANs, as well as end points, for IP capability.
Beyond these issues, it is possible that the IT manager within an organisation will not accept videoconferencing taking place on his/her data network. [ISDN is a discreet network not impacting existing communications networks.]
Eeles is confident that this new cost structure will relieve organisational pressure to get more value out of videoconferencing. Companies can undertake virtual meetings more often and more economically now and will be in a stronger position to reconsider videoconferencing costs against travel budgets.
Uniquely, we can also offer organisations the ability to conduct small or large-scale videoconferences from more than 3,500 sites in 1,125 cities worldwide, through our subsidiary Proximity, concluded Eeles. What this means is that this dramatic price reduction will also benefit those organisations that outsource completely their videoconferencing requirements. We really are the only conferencing service provider offering a total solution with a full range of voice, video and web - conferencing services in 40 countries around the world.
About ACT Teleconferencing
ACT Teleconferencing, Inc. (Nasdaq-ACTT) is a leading independent worldwide provider of audio, video and web-based conferencing products and services. Established in 1990, ACT Teleconferencing provides unmatched coverage around the world with 15 service delivery centres and sales offices in nine countries.
ACT is the only conferencing company with integrated global audio and video conferencing platforms that provide uniform international services, uniform billing and local language services.
ACT's comprehensive suite of applications enable organisations to collaborate with customers, team members, investors and employees locally as well as globally for increased productivity, lower travel expenses and more efficient communications. ACT technology and custom-built applications enable organisations to reach their communication goals around the globe with ease.
For the third year in a row, ACT has been named to Deloitte & Touches Fast 500 program, a ranking of the 500 fastest growing technology companies sin the USA.
ACT Teleconferencing clients in Australia include Compaq, National Meat Federation, ABN Amro, University of Queensland, CSR, AMP, Woolworths, Westfields, Lend Lease, Ernst & Young, Arnotts and KPMG.
For more information about ACT Teleconferencing visit the company's website at www.acttel.com.

The virtual meeting centre in todays business environment

2003-02-12T12:59:00Z

The Australian operation of ACT Teleconferencing, Inc. (Nasdaq-ACTT), a leading independent worldwide provider of audio, video, data and web-based conferencing products and services, has experienced healthy growth in the demand for its services over the last 12 months.
The company launched its comprehensive, state-of-the-art video inhouse video conferencing facilities late last year to enable organisations to undertake a try-before-you-buy approach to undertaking their regional, interstate and overseas communications needs.
David Harwood, Pacific Regional Sales Manager, ACT Teleconferencing indicated the growth was between 15-20 per cent. Harwood sees the next three years as an exceptional time as the telcos merge with the internet cloud. Harwood claims, "With customer expectation and the imminent deployment of the voice and video over IP a reality, the business opportunities and business problems that can be solved particularly through service provider portals; are enormous."
Harwood maintains that, though an understanding of the business benefits currently exists, there is still a requirement for ongoing education when it comes to videoconferencing. Executives need to become more comfortable with the technology, claims Harwood. He believes that the technology has started to reach the level of ease of use of a PC. The level of complexity in video conferencing operation has reduced sufficiently to address the fear factor and deliver results for first-time users.
Today, there are legacy conferencing systems that companies invested in some years ago. Not only were they costly, they were challenging to operate, says Harwood. Because there was no standard operating environment, there were a number of disparate systems in the market resulting in users having to operate different user interfaces.
In summary, these systems have not been intuitive, Harwood says. And your senior executives are typically not there to learn operator skills just simply to use and facilitate. In the recent past, to bring five to six people, from different global offices, together in a virtual meeting required an engineer to make the meeting happen. But there are still multiple break points that can impact negatively that virtual meeting with the end result that the executives decide to catch a plane next time!
Failures can occur with the operator, with the equipment, cables (often involving 15 to 16 cables to be plugged in) and with the carrier backbone (usually an ISDN link). The issue still exists within organisations that video conferencing is delegated to someone else. It does not fall into the IT domain or the voice domain often left to the PAs or secretaries to coordinate its operation and expected successful outcomes.
No wonder theres a substantial reluctance out there with using the technology fear of failure, says Harwood. But the growing availability of low-cost, high-speed IP connections through broadband and the ability to, therefore, video conference from the desktop is simplifying the technology for users. We are talking about clicking and speaking, clicking and viewing versus protocol-based connections and reliance on ISDN which requires higher levels of maintenance and support.
The switch to IP is good news beyond ease of use with a lower cost per minute for video services as well as a move to fixed monthly video network services.
Harwood adds that many users are increasingly interested in single-source conferencing service providers (CSPs) like ACT that deliver and assure the total conferencing experience. By offering audio, video and data services, as well as handling IP and circuit-switched customer needs and handling traffic across all geographies we have become an audio and video conferencing partner of choice with a rapidly growing number of organisations, said Harwood.
Harwood explains that growth in the conferencing industry over the next few years is coming from web conferencing which is clearly the most cost effective of accomplishing meetings and events. Wainhouse Research (Conferencing Markets and Strategies Volume 3 December 2001) supports these views forecasting, as more organisations become web conferencing savvy, a growth of 48 per cent worldwide in web conferencing with a 20 per cent decline in average per minute revenues.
Another trend has been the move towards on-demand audio conferencing services rather than scheduled attended audio conferences. ACTs customer Request Broadband says Request utilises the automated service for its sales conferences which involve between 10 to 14 attendees nationally. This allows the organisation to be more flexible with arranging times and dates and making alterations to these due to unexpected occurrences.
We do not have to arrange advanced reservations or an operator. We simply use our ReadyConnect calling card to commence the audio conference, said Scott Carter, Request Director of Sales. As chairperson of the conference call, I have control of each sales meeting with staff simply joining the conference by dialing-in themselves from any remote location. Its simple, timely and cost effective.
At the end of the business day, says Harwood, a video or an audio conference must be conducted professionally, replacing a physical high-powered meeting. ACT ensures that the meeting is more important than the technology supporting it, Harwood says. As a genuine end-to-end CSP, being much more than just a bridging company enabling conferencing technology, we are the insurance that these organisations need and willingly pay for.
ACT believes video conferencing should provide a complete simulation of a normal meeting environment, enabling both parties to see, hear and present material, just as if they were in the same room. We see videoconferencing as speeding up business process and procedures in the same way that the fax and the email have revolutionised the way we share information, concludes Harwood.
-ENDS
About ACT Teleconferencing
ACT Teleconferencing, Inc. (Nasdaq-ACTT) is a leading independent worldwide provider of audio, video and web-based conferencing products and services. Established in 1990, ACT Teleconferencing provides unmatched coverage around the world with 15 service delivery centres and sales offices in nine countries.
ACT is the only conferencing company with integrated global audio and video conferencing platforms that provide uniform international services, uniform billing and local language services.
ACT's comprehensive suite of applications enable organisations to collaborate with customers, team members, investors and employees locally as well as globally for increased productivity, lower travel expenses and more efficient communications. ACT technology and custom-built applications enable organisations to reach their communication goals around the globe with ease.
For the third year in a row, ACT has been named to Deloitte & Touches Fast 500 program, a ranking of the 500 fastest growing technology companies sin the USA.
ACT Teleconferencing clients in Australia include Compaq, National Meat Federation, ABN Amro, University of Queensland, CSR, AMP, Woolworths, Westfields, Lend Lease, Ernst & Young, Arnotts, Oil Search and KPMG.
For more information about ACT Teleconferencing visit the company's website at www.acttel.com