Home TelePresence coming from Cisco?

Blogosphere lights up with specualtion on Oct. 6 consumer product launch

By Jim Duffy on Wed, 09/29/10 - 4:46pm.

The blogosphere is alive with speculation that Cisco next week will unveil a home version of its TelePresence virtual conferencing system for $200 to $500. The source of the fire seems to be this post from Reuters, but The Wall Street Journal's Kara Swisher is taking her share of the credit as well.

Comcast and Verizon may launch and endorse the product with Cisco, which is expected to compete directly with Skype's Internet video-calling service. Remember when Cisco was going to buy Skype? Instead, Skype hooked up with Cisco's unified communications and collaboration competitor Avaya this week.

Cisco is expected to extol the high-definition video virtues of its home TelePresence system as an advantage over the Skype service, Swisher says in her post. It is also expected to be much easier to implement than Cisco's higher-end, higher-priced business conferencing systems.

Cisco's holding a press event next week to roll out a new consumer device. Swisher, Reuters and many others in cyberjournalism are pretty confident this is it.