Viseon Says MSOs Testing Its VisiFone

Cable World, July 28, 2003

Byline: ANTHONY CRUPI

Videophony is a central tenet of the future as promised by The Jetsons; along with the automated dining console and the robot housekeeper, the idea of uniting video with two-way voice communications was '60s-era futurism at its coolest.

It took a couple of computer geeks with a jones for java (the caffeinated beverage, not the programming language) to finally marry the two technologies in 1991. Some graduate students at Cambridge who wearied of climbing a flight of stairs to check on the status of their coffeepot aimed an analog video camera at the percolator and hooked it up to a computer. Thus was born the webcam, the zygotic precursor to videophony.

Dallas-based Viseon was one of the first U.S. firms to offer videophones to the consumer market, and is now targeting MSOs looking to serve home-based businesses. CEO John Harris said that the VisiFone is being tested "with the top nine cable MSOs" in lab trials and in the field.

"We've had a ton of interest from MSOs looking to bring this product to their subscribers," Harris said. "This is the churn-buster that cable's been looking for."

SBC is also testing the videophone.

The VisiFone utilizes any high-speed Internet connection of from 128K to 512K to deliver 30 frames per second of video over an integrated 6-inch TFT (thin-film transistor)-LCD display. The unit supports a number of conferencing standards, including H.323, H.261 and H.263 for video, and G.711 and G.723.1 for audio.

Viseon has slapped a $599 price tag on the unit, a figure that could be a barrier to both consumer and MSO adoption. But given time and a sharp rise in sales volumes, the cost of the videophone could very well drop "below the $200 mark," Harris said.

Because the VisiFone taps into a broadband network via a cable or DSL modem, calls made with the new gadgets are handled like any other HSD traffic - and may be wholly invisible to the service provider. (Vonage's voice-only service works on the same piggybacking principle.)

While cable ops continue to develop VoIP service, some MSOs may look to videophony as a means of differentiating their service from that of the Bells. Comcast CEO Brian Roberts suggested as much in a recent Fortune magazine feature.

Although there's an undeniable value-add in videophony, certain communication habits will have to radically change before the technology is met with widespread acceptance.

"It'll take a while for people to get comfortable with this," said Brian O'Laughlin, a media professor at the University of Alabama. "Personal vanity will be an issue. People won't be comfortable answering their phone without grooming themselves first."

Luckily, the VisiFone comes equipped with a privacy button, Harris said.

THE NEXT QUESTION:

*How long will it take for an untested product to gain traction among consumers and MSOs?