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Video Calling a Natural Move

Posted on: Tuesday, 26 July 2005, 15:00 CDT

Not yet two years old, internet phone company Skype is adding video to its line-up of next-generation services. MICHAEL HERMAN reports.

For the more than 100 years since Scottish inventor Alexander Graham Bell made the first the telephone call using his "electrical speech machine", the essentials of voice telecommunications have remained unchanged.

Much like the railway companies that closed the gaps between remote locations by laying down lengths of track for the steel beasts to travel on, telecommunications companies used a network of cables to eliminate the effect of distance between people.

Human society rolled into the 20th century with steel underfoot, copper overhead and the tyranny of distance under threat.

Yet even as aircraft took to the sky, cars to the roads and rockets to the nearest reaches of outer space, telecommunications remained largely the same. The machines that powered the telecommunications system evolved, but the way people engaged with each other over the network did not.

Then, in the 1970s, a highly specialised package that combined an image scanner, modem and computer printer into a single unit was developed, changing the way businesses operated and -- unnoticed by most -- heralding the dawn of a new age of telecommunications and more impressive advances that were already in development and mere years away from becoming commonplace.

Fast-forward 30 years and the world of telecommunications has grown into a diverse marketplace of competing and complementary technologies that provide users with more ways to connect with each other over the sophisticated descendant of Bell's rudimentary network.

Today, says Niklas Zennstrom, chief executive of internet phone company Skype, video has become one of their most highly requested features. "It's a natural extension from where we're going," he says.

In less than two years, Skype has served more than 10 billion minutes of conversation, allowing users to speak to each other for free, or for a fee to call fixed-line and mobile telephone numbers (SkypeOut), receive calls from other phones (SkypeIn) and receive voicemail messages.

With the second birthday of its prototype program just weeks away and more than 140 million downloads of the software installed on computers around the world, Skype is as much a phenomenon as a technology.

Dismissed by detractors as a curiosity that would disappoint and then disappear, Skype has developed a global market, signed up a huge group of users and introduced a basket of services faster than it takes most companies to work out what they're doing.

Around the world, developers have clustered around Skype to create add- ons to the network, the latest being vSkype (Video Skype) from United States communication service company Santa Cruz Networks (SCN).

The test version allows users to securely conduct video calls in groups of two to 200 and share applications, spreadsheets, presentations or photos with others.

Some of this functionality is already offered by instant messenger services, but SCN says future releases will include camera games and access to a library of camera personalities, wallpaper and drawing tools.

"Professional users will be provided with various call controls, white boarding, meeting moderation, bandwidth control, and recording and archiving tools through our network of partners," says Santa Cruz Networks' chief executive, Stuart Jacobson.

"Skype has changed the communications paradigm and built a vibrant global community. vSkype is a natural extension to Skype and allows the community to come together in interesting new ways."

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Source: Press, The; Christchurch, New Zealand

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