• Local Markets
• Ottawa

Summary:

• AV systems in Ottawa face high pressure to perform across sectors like government, healthcare, education, and business—where downtime can have serious consequences.
• The five most common AV issues in the region are: poor platform interoperability, audio failures, network reliability problems, undertrained staff, and outdated room designs.
• Solutions may include one-touch join platforms, beamforming mics, network segmentation, hands-on training, and hybrid-first room redesigns.
• Best practices like regular AV checks, firmware updates, cable management, and proper mic placement help ensure long-term system reliability.
• ET Group works with Ottawa organizations to design and support purpose-built AV environments that are scalable, secure, and easy to use.

5 Common AV Challenges for Businesses in Ottawa & How to Solve Them

Ottawa is home to some of Canada’s most important government agencies, hospitals, and research centers. But it’s also a busy hub for higher education, global business, special events, and innovation.

In high-stakes environments like these, AV often needs to function flawlessly and stay operational at all times. Glitches, connection failures, low-quality video feeds, and bad audio lead to serious reputational damage, missed opportunities, and in some cases, even serious harm.

Below, we tell you why AV is so essential to Ottawa’s top sectors and why the top five pain points cause so many problems locally. We’ll also tell you how the right strategy and insights can help you solve them.

Why AV Matters So Much in Ottawa

It’s easier to see the impact of AV when you understand how it’s typically used in the field day-to-day. So, let’s get started by zooming in on some Ottawa’s biggest players.

Government Agencies

Examples: House of Commons, Health Canada, and Canada Revenue Agency (CRA).

Organizations like these use AV to:

• Securely communicate over video across departments
• Deliver live or pre-recorded public briefings and votes
• Coordinate between provincial, federal, or global offices
• Respond to natural disasters, like pandemics and hurricanes

Government agencies almost always have special compliance needs, so their AV systems must meet strict regulations for safety and performance. Examples include support for bilingual instructions on panels, network isolation, and high-level data encryption protocols.

Educational Institutions

Examples: Carleton University, University of Ottawa, and Algonquin College.

Organizations like these use AV to:

• Deliver remote and hybrid learning experiences
• Host live guest lectures and virtual events
• Record, stream, and store lectures for easier access
• Support study groups, student collaboration, and research

AV on campuses and in schools needs to be flexible and adaptable, but also intuitive enough for anyone to use it without much training. Tools like interactive whiteboards, Microsoft Teams Rooms, and virtual collaboration spaces matter just as much as audio and video.

National Defence & Public Safety

Examples: Ottawa-Carleton Detention Centre (OCDC), the Department of National Defence (DND), and Global Affairs.

Organizations like these use AV to:

• Securely run command-and-control centres
• Share classified information across internal departments
• Monitor real-time video feeds during operations and exercises
• Communicate with Canada’s allies, the UN, and NATO

AV systems may need to be fully isolated from the outside world to keep confidential or Top Secret information safe in contexts like these. High-level encryption protects data while it’s in transfer and stops bad actors from accessing info that may threaten national or public safety.

Healthcare & Research

Examples: The Ottawa Hospital, Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario (CHEO), and National Research Council Canada.

Organizations like these use AV to:

• Deliver telemedicine services and host remote consultations
• Live-stream procedures and simulations for training purposes
• Keep research teams connected across facilities and time zones
• Support real-time data sharing in labs and patient rooms

Efficiency is paramount in healthcare, as is uptime—because every minute and second counts. If a critical system goes down in the middle of a surgery or consult, it can delay care, affect patient outcomes, and make it harder to coordinate resources.

Private Sector Businesses

Examples: Shopify, BlackBerry QNX, and Kinaxis

Organizations like these use AV to:

• Host global team meetings and daily check-ins
• Pitch products and initiatives to investors and clients 
• Hold board meetings with leaders around the world
• Support remote or hybrid workstyles

Private sector businesses often report to shareholders, so they have specific budgets and spending limits. That means AV investments need to be completely justifiable as well as scalable and cost-effective.

The Top 5 AV Challenges In Ottawa

Next, let’s take a look at what can go wrong when systems don’t work as they should. To give you perspective, we’ve included info on who struggles with each pain point the most.

1. Poor Interoperability Across Platforms

Interoperability refers to how seamlessly or invisibly video conferencing tools and platforms integrate with one another. In an ideal world, people should be able to move between Microsoft Teams, Zoom, WebEx, Google Meet, Slack, and other tools with the click of a button.

Poor interoperability introduces friction that makes it harder for people to stay productive, share information, and keep data safe. Teams spend more time focused on minutiae and mundane tasks than the actual human experience of working together.

The Impact:

• People waste more time hopping between platforms
• Meetings start late—or worse, never start at all
• It’s harder to share files and schedule meetings
• Tasks that should be automated stay manual instead

Who’s Affected:

Government agencies and businesses will struggle with this pain point the most. It’s easy to set rules for what people use in-house—the real headaches occur when you need to start accommodating others.

The Solution:

One-Touch Join solutions, like Synergy SKY and Pexip, sit between your calendar, software, and AV hardware and make connections seamless. When they’re configured correctly around a business’s needs, people join meetings in Zoom, MTR, WebEx and other platforms with the click of a button.

2. Audio Failures & Acoustic Challenges

Meetings fall apart fast when people can’t hear one another clearly or constantly need to repeat themselves. Poor acoustics in large or open-concept offices, bad mic placement, and background noise from nearby traffic and HVAC systems are all common.

The Impact:

• Voices sound muffled, distorted, or echoey
• Straining to hear leads to cognitive fatigue
• People leave meetings frustrated and drained
• Audio seems scratchy or cuts in and out

Who’s Affected:

Hospitals, military units, and corporate offices all struggle with audio issues like these equally. The simple truth is that many of Ottawa’s high-rises and buildings are older, which means they were never designed for acoustics in the first place.

The Solution:

Beamforming ceiling mics and ceiling-mounted speakers help capture voices and transmit them clearly and evenly from anywhere in the room. Sound masking systems like Biamp’s Cambridge Qt X help keep meeting audio in—and background noise out.

3. Connectivity & Network Reliability Issues

AV systems are only ever as reliable as the networks and connectivity behind them. You can invest in the best products in the world and user experiences will still be awful if your Wi-Fi is overloaded or the network itself is unstable. 

The Impact:

• Meetings freeze or drop unexpectedly
• Rooms disconnect in the middle of presentations
• Video and audio streams lag or stutter during key moments
• Digital signage and video walls stop updating or crash

Who’s Affected:

Hotels, event venues, school campuses suffer with issues like these often. The sheer number of people present in spaces like these can overload networks that aren’t properly isolated or segmented.

The Solution:

Hardwiring AV equipment to the network helps resolve connectivity problems related to unstable or overloaded Wi-Fi networks, local interference, and thick concrete walls. A good AV provider can help you develop workarounds if you can’t do this or retrofit the space for some reason (e.g., historic properties).

Segmenting networks into categories for guests, staff, and other purposes reduce congestions, while remote monitoring and IT support will help you respond to incidents faster. That means less downtime.

4. Undertrained Staff & Low AV Adoption

Even the best AV system won’t deliver any real value if nobody understands how to use it in the first place. Tech adoption stays consistently low when AV isn’t intuitive to use and people don’t know where to go to get help.

The Impact:

• Meetings get rescheduled because no one knows how to use the AV
• Purpose-built spaces like boardrooms and huddle spaces go unused
• IT departments waste time training people on the basics daily
• People give up and revert to using their own insecure personal devices

Who’s Affected:

This is more of a human-centric problem than a sector-specific issue. The simple truth is that most organizations just don’t realize how important skills like these are, so they often leave end users to figure it out on their own—or just send them complicated user guides.  

The Solution:

Make hands-on training and interactive testing mandatory. Have real people test the system, and create simple quick-start guides that also tell people who to contact if they need help.

5. Inflexible or Outdated Room Design

Most of our infrastructure and most local buildings were developed long before AV—or even the internet itself. Factors like the size, shape, or layout of the room can affect every aspect of your AV and contribute to poor user experiences.

The Impact:

• Cameras partially point at blank walls or only capture half the table
• Harsh or uneven lighting makes it impossible to see screens
• Controls are locked to the front of the room or hard to access
• Wires and other infrastructure clutter tables and create tripping hazards

Who’s Affected:

Anyone who doesn’t work with an AV expert to design human-centric spaces—or hasn’t upgraded an existing space for many years.

The Solution:

Sometimes, the best possible solution is to go back to the drawing board and start over with expert help. Schedule a virtual room design consult so we can help you identify obstacles and figure out how to work around them upfront.

When it’s time to start choosing hardware, look for features like AI-powered speaker tracking and adaptive lighting. AV-friendly, modular furniture, easy-to-use room panels, and controls embedded in surfaces help make rooms more comfortable and deliver a better experience.

How to Get High-Quality Video & Sound

Investing in better equipment can definitely help—see our Zoom Rooms hardware guide for a few of the top options for meeting spaces in 2025. But before you break out the company credit card, know that you also need to follow best practices like these:

• Keep firmware and software updated. Hardware manufacturers send out updates for a reason. Update firmware and drivers regularly to make sure you benefit from security patches, bug fixes, and cutting-edge features.
• Run sound checks and video checks often. Schedule weekly, biweekly, or monthly checks so you can take action faster. Better yet, let us handle it for you.  
• Keep hardware clean and dust-free. Wipe down camera lenses, displays, video walls, and microphones often with microfiber cloths intended for that purpose.
• Practice good cable management. This is a bigger issue than most people think. Cords wear down and deliver a sub-par signal faster when they’re disorganized.
• Use soft surfaces to improve acoustics. Rugs, curtains, acoustic panels, and cushions help dampen reverb and lower echoing. They also make folks feel more comfortable in the space.
• Never position mics near fans or vents. Noisy equipment can completely overtake microphones and amplify how loud they are in the room. Space them apart by at least a few feet—better yet, across the room. 

It’s also a good idea to build a long-term relationship with an AV design company like us. Purpose-built systems are more likely to keep delivering crystal-clear audio and video for the life of your space when you follow the right strategy and have the right support.

Solve AV Problems for Good with ET Group

ET Group helps Ottawa-based businesses build reliable, human-centric AV solutions. We can help design, integrate, and support video conferencing technology, hybrid meeting spaces, digital signage, video walls, control systems, and so much more. If you’re ready to make the AV pain points on this list a part of the past, book a discovery call—there’s a brighter, more unified future just around the corner.

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