posted 03 September 2002 07:39 PM               

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1. Much of what I have read on video telephony for wireless has focused on the interests of the business user in this area. Applications could be a video phone call back to the home office, mobile access to video teleconference meetings, etc.. How does Vodafone envision the role of video telephony for consumers using wireless services? What kind of typical applications or scenarios in video telephony would interest the consumer user?

2. For mobile devices used in wireless video telephony there appears to be two schools of thought. One group favors the use of wireless handsets that are enhanced by the addition of color displays and cameras. An example would be DoCoMo FOMA video phone that is on sale today in Japan. A second group favors mobile devices that use a PDA form factor with wireless interface modules or plug in cards (plus cameras). An example of this group would be a mobile device similar to a Compaq IPaq or a Palm Pilot, but with the addition of a wireless module & camera. What are your thoughts in this mobile device area? Do you see the handset or the PDA style device as the dominant wireless video telephone?

Thanks,

Cliff Sayre

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posted 06 September 2002 09:07 AM               

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To your questions Cliff,

I think the strength of the mobile service is that you can use it everywhere, when ever you like. It is as easy as making a voice call when we talk about handset embedded video telephony client. This makes it a lot different from video conferencing and therefore I think the use cases are different.

We see people using their mobile phone to be in closer contact with their friends an family. Children for instance get a mobile phone because parents want to be able to get in contact with them any time. I think Video Telephony can be seen as an extension of this. You can now even see the other person while you are talking, showing the surrounding or the the new born baby, etc. There is a higher level of emotion in the conversation. Therefore I can imaging to see mobile Video Telephony as a consumer product.

I think especially for this segment ease of use is an extremely important issue like I explained in the interview. This links into your second question regarding PDA'S with Plug in Cards or Smart Phones. They are probably not as easy to use as a Video Phone, especially if plug in devices are used. To the contrary the have more functionalities, large display, etc. These devices were originally made for the business market and therefore I see PDA's capable for Video communication rather in this segment. However I think in the future both terminal types will co-exist.

I hope this answers your questions Cliff.

Regards
Peter

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posted 10 September 2002 10:33 AM            

In the first place, right now, a small number of people(50000subscribers) are using mobile video telephony, it is not yet a way of life and it is kind of embarassing on the street to hold a mobile videophone in my hand and my face or eyes looking into the embedded camera to have a video call to someone else. It is because as far as I can see on the street, no one else is doing the same kind of thing like me.

But I am trying to show where I am to whom I am having a video call with every time I go somewhere to see if the person whom I am talking with can see it well. Right now 64kbps with MPEG4 for video calls, so as far as the usage, my feeling is it is like 128kbps ISDN video call. But I think that if this bandwidth extended to 384kbps, I am assuming that this technology will be accepted by consumers or business users as I think that the current level of video quality is not enough and very low. We may have to wait for 4G that is planned to be launched in 2010 in Japan.

I usually carry around PDA mobile videophone as it has larger display than handset(conventional shape), but it is not only for video but also for i-mode, mobile internet service. It is much easier to do i-mode on PDA than on conventionally shaped handset ,and to do SMS as well.

But the price for the video call in Japan is around \50JPY($0.42US) per minute, which I think is very expensive to have a video call.
If you have a video call for 30 minutes that costs \1,500JPY($12.6US). It is more expensive than 384kbps ISDN video call for 30 minutes or \1,200JPY($10US).

If the cost for the video call become reasonable together with the higher quality of the video, this technology will be widely used not only by consumers but also by business people. Feature rich, high video quality with reasonable cost is a must or prerequisite for wide usage.

keisuke
23:30 Sept 10,2002 Japan Standard Time +9hGMT

NTT DoCoMo 3G web site http://foma.nttdocomo.co.jp/english/