John J Nance from ABC News has written an interesting article that forsees the Airlines greatest future competition is "transparency in teleconferencing" and it's coming impact on the Airline Industry.

"When it matures to the status of transparency — when people can sit in two different parts of the planet and see and hear each other with the same degree of transparency we've achieved with voice communications — two very large challenges to commercial aviation will begin to roll across the industry like an economic hurricane — a change driven first by convenience, and then by cost.

Imagine sitting in a comfortable, well-appointed boardroom with your counterparts in full color and essentially three-dimensional clarity across the table in what appears to be the other half of the same room — when in fact they're in Tokyo or London and presented to your eyes as a high-definition, digitally reassembled, liquid crystal image on a seemingly transparent glass wall that divides the table. When someone speaks, you hear his or her voice coming from the same place you see their image. No cameras jerk around, eye contact is instant and easy, and documents can be exchanged in full color by very high-speed facsimile devices built into the table. Add to this a new breed of service organizations that will specialize in catering the same lunch on the same plates on both sides of an ocean, and you have what we in aviation have understood for a very long time: The effectiveness of good simulation. With the realism of a flight simulator, you're essentially together, with the exception that trying to shake hands through the glass won't work.

Now, imagine a cost of $40 per person per day versus $400 to $600 and you see why, when the technology matures to achieve transparency (where the medium no longer gets in the way), businesses simply won't have a choice. The result will be a massive decline in business airline travel.

He's right. Already, I've seen a Blackberry and Instant Messenging transform many small businesses.

But $40 for three-dimensional clarity, with high-speed faxes, and lunch off the same plates sounds too good to be true.

I'd pay $100 for a service like that. What's it worth to you? Post your answers in the comments.

Source: ABC News