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Video Phones Offer Face Time, Even if Consumers Aren't Ready
An assistant to Taiwan's External Trade Development Council displays a video phone from Mototech Technology.
(By Wally Santana -- Associated Press)
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Of the three issues, cost is the closest to being solved.
When it first offered Picturephone in Pittsburgh in 1970, Hochheiser said AT&T charged $160 a month to rent the unit, and customers had to pay 25 cents per minute after the first half-hour of calling.
Skype has teamed with Logitech International SA to sell "Skype-certified" webcams, most of which cost less than $100. Aside from this, calls are free with broadband Internet access.
Santa Clara, Calif.-based 8x8's Packet8 Broadband VideoPhone -- introduced at $249 including rebates -- now costs $149.99 for the unit, and a $19.95 monthly fee covers all video calls and unlimited local and long-distance voice calls in the United States and Canada.
Schaumburg, Ill.-based Motorola's Ojo video phone, which launched in May at $799, has fallen to $499 with rebates. Beyond that, consumers must pay a $14.95 monthly fee that covers unlimited video calling but does not provide regular Internet phone service.
For the Motorola and Packet8 devices, consumers may also need a router.
The chicken-and-egg problem remains, but industry analysts said declining prices and the spread of high-speed Internet access would gradually help overcome this.
Director Stanley Kubrick, in his 1968 film "2001: A Space Odyssey," hit on what industry analysts and officials say is the key market for the consumer video phone: people far from home who want to see their children and grandchildren.
Dr. Heywood R. Floyd, a character in the film who was killing time at a space station while changing flights to get to the moon, popped into a video payphone to talk to his young daughter whose birthday he will miss. The call cost just $1.70.
Jeff Wacker, the futurist at Plano, Tex.-based Electronic Data Systems Corp., said he thinks people will eventually get used to video calls, saying the growing availability of TV on cell phones may help smooth the way.
"We will have a lot of people who want to connect in a bigger way than just with voice," he said. "We have a lot of grandparents with the baby-boomer generation . . . you are going to find that as a driver, that just didn't exist as much in the 1970s."
The third problem -- human nature -- may be the hardest to solve.
Jonathan Hurd, a vice president with Boston-based consulting group Adventis Corp., fondly remembers trying AT&T's Picturephone when he visited the 1964 World's Fair as a 7-year-old.
"It will take off at some point, but we are still years away," Hurd said, saying one thing that would drive sales in the business market would be the desire to cut travel costs but maintain a personal connection.
He also said that new rules of etiquette would have to evolve and that people would have to adjust their phone behavior.
Hurd said he was leaning back in his chair and flipping a purple pen back and forth in a hand resting on his head during an interview.
"I would have a more alert pose if I were on a video connection," he said, laughing.
