1. is absolutely true. Real time communication has been crucial to my success as a remote developer. I'm in South America so it's easy for me to work at the same time as coworkers in the US. I worked for a some time for a British company and after a while I just decided to wake up 4 hours earlier so I could communicate with my coworkers.

2. and 3. shows your organization has communication problems. One of my favorite ways to combat that is to do some pair programming. You'll get to know people quite rapidly if you are talking to one each other 8 hours a day.