When Hewlett-Packard began selling its telepresence systems two years ago, some observers predicted that they’d soon start taking a bite out of business travel.

Yes, they had some little problems: they took up entire rooms and cost $500,000 apiece and only worked for intra- (rather than inter-) company communication.

But the four HD monitors in every “conference room” looked so good that it suddenly struck some people as foolish to send someone on a several-day trip for a two-hour face-to-face.

Well, just two years have passed, and the NY Times already has some evidence that telepresence systems are reducing business travel.

It’s just anecdotal, for now, but reporter Steve Lohr did dig up enough anecdotes to suggest the early stages of something big.

Accenture, a technology consulting firm, has installed 13 of the videoconferencing rooms at its offices around the world and plans to have an additional 22 operating before the end of the year.

Accenture figures its consultants used virtual meetings to avoid 240 international trips and 120 domestic flights in May alone, for an annual saving of millions of dollars and countless hours of wearying travel for its workers.

Those are pretty striking numbers. A meager 13 telepresence rooms eliminated 360 trips in a month with 21 working days. That’s slightly more than one trip per day saved by each of the rooms.

You can make back $500,000 pretty fast at that rate — even if employers don’t factor in a dime for the increased morale of workers who travel less.

And of course, the systems don’t even cost $500,000 any more. The price is now $350,000 and dropping.

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