RACE BANK — a Multimedia Broadband Cooperation Project in the Banking Business Sector

In the framework of the European programme RACE (“Research and Development in Advanced Communications Technologies in Europe”), a project called BANK has been established. In this project, two major European banks work together with three software houses, a telecom supplier and an IT supplier with the goal to investigate and prototype a multimedia banking terminal. This terminal will allow the banks to offer to their customers both high-quality, eye-catching information on banking services and the opportunity to enter a desktop conference with a remote bank expert. The conference includes audio, face-to-face video and shared text/graphics applications that support the expert in promoting certain banking services to the customer. The paper gives the project scenario background and then discusses some networking and multimedia related questions in the given environment. It closes with some conclusions on system evaluation and system acceptance.