A preferred video conferencing system (10) includes a plurality of customer stations (14) selectively coupled with at least one local video conferencing station (20) that routes service requests from the customer stations (14) to a remote server computer (24). The server computer (24), in turn, activates a pager (42) to provide the service request including data identifying the requesting customer station to a service provider. In response, the service provider originates video conferencing traffic from a selected remote video conferencing station (22) using the identifying data. In response, the remote conferencing station (22) originates a call over the network to the local station (20) and provides originating video conferencing traffic to the local station (20). The local station (20) routes the video traffic to the selected customer station (14).