Brokerage Scenario To stay competitive in the financial marketplace, a major Canadian brokerage firm purchases small conference-room videoconference systems for its Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal offices. Management is excited to not only be able to reduce travel costs and improve employee performance, but more importantly through working more closely with staff improve overall corporate performance. The initial purchase of systems was justified on travel savings alone, but there was concern on management's part with not being able to pin down the variable cost of the ISDN and bridging costs to link the 3 offices together. Management initially budgetted for about one hour's usage per day, but found that meetings were longer and that other departments saw the value of closer communications with staff and clients in the field. When the bills from the telco and the bridging service firm arrived at the end of the first month, they could not believe they had used 15 hours of bridging from each location, plus 20 hours of point to point calling at a cost of $8780 per month. Still seeing the value, but now only for the most important of issues, they began to monitor and police usage, successfully paring usage down to 10 hours of point to point and 7 hours of bridging hours or $4,586 per month. Management reduced cost by deciding which point to point and multipoint conferences should and should not take place, but in doing so, dampened the enthusiasm for the $45,000 purchase of video conferencing equipment which had been made. Employees didn't want to have to continuously justify to management why it was important to have a conference with staff and customers in remote locations. Soon, the new video conferencing system began to collect dust as only the senior ranks used it and its purpose of building the business was abandoned. Upon seeing this management decided to look more closely at costs and benefits. To their surprise they found that the ISDN lines they were using were 25 year old technology. Seeing the explosion of fibre optics, the rapid growth of IP networks and hearing the constant message of convergence and affordable bandwidth, they came to the conclusion that there must be a better way. The firm's telecom analyst suggested that they call Broadband Collaborative Solutions (BCS) A Broadband professional, after careful analysis of the clients requirements, recommended that the bank continue to use the same video conferencing equipment, but use Broadband's secure, guaranteed quality Virtual Presence Network. Access to the flat rate network included unlimited bridging, multiple conference rooms for various user groups, plus free access for clients or other locations to call in and join conferences. Now instead of paying $8780 per month for 50 hours of conferencing, the flat unlimited rate for the 3 offices was $1785 per month, realizing immediate savings of $83,940 per year. More importantly, the video system was now being used almost continually generating significant additional savings for the firm in travel costs and productivity. Today, all locations are connected to the Virtual Presence Network with ISDN gateways serving other ISDN systems at other corporate and customer locations.