I agree with your second point, not so much with the first, I've seen very intelligent approaches to video conferencing (only full HD video for the speaker, and dynamic upscaling-downscaling based on who's speaking), not to mention bandwidth is very cheap now.
Communication is still a lot better face to face, but video conferencing is getting a lot better (and I'm betting on that with my own startup attempt :) ).
I'd definitely schedule periodic face to face meetings for remote teams, but that doesn't mean remote cannot work.
maybe i was not clear, there is no need to show participants at all, they would be fine with love text chat, you only need one video stream of trainee, which would be very cheap, they could even use Youtube
Communication is still a lot better face to face, but video conferencing is getting a lot better (and I'm betting on that with my own startup attempt :) ).
I'd definitely schedule periodic face to face meetings for remote teams, but that doesn't mean remote cannot work.