Experiences from multimedia user trials: user aspects, technical problems, and future concepts

Main experiences from the multimedia user trials are presented. Joint projects with users, operators, and manufacturers of information processing and telecommunication equipment are necessary to understand user requirements and to translate them in corresponding technical requirements for workstations, networks, and interconnection devices. Short term solutions for project prototypes suffer mainly from high costs for experimental equipment and from compatibility problems between equipment of different manufacturers. Due to expensive tariffs for public broadband networks most multimedia applications run in a local environment. ATM components and networks will be able to efficiently support all aspects of multimedia communications.