SPOTLIGHT: Videl beta viewed
Vidtel, the "world's first" video telephony company, was spotted last week at the Plug and Play expo.
Frequent blogger Luca Filigheddu saw a demo of the service running on a Grandstream video phone. Costs for the service will be "in the range of $30-50" per month and should include a video phone, plus unlimited video calls and some amount of stock vanilla voice calls. Currently, the service is in a closed beta and supposedly will be available in December through selected retail channels.
Skeptics might note that Vonage wanted to take a run at the video phone market in 2005 with mixed results, and Packet8 has had a foot in the videophone service for quite some time. Plus there are freebie services, such as Skype and Mac-whatever, that have been around for a while.
For more:
- Luca's blog on sighting Vidtel
Related article
Wharton Views a Vidtel - FierceOnlineVideo
Comments (2) | Post a comment
Comments
Posted by Scott Wharton | October 1, 2008 - 6:37pm
Hi Doug,
Thanks for writing about Vidtel. We call ourselves "the world's first video telephone company" because we are the first pure play video calling service provider to consumers and small businesses (many have tried doing video before as you point out but most of them do it as small, niche part of their offerings).
Scott
Posted by Anonymous | October 21, 2008 - 11:31am
Dear Doug
Our company, Wind Currents Communications, Inc. (WCCI) has been offering V2VIP™ Voice-and-Video Internet Phone service combined with the Grandstream videophone since 2007 (Does that make WCCI the first?). It's a simple plug-n-dial, pure play videophone service that offers a variety of affordable video calling plans that include unlimited, world wide video calls with VoIP capability as an option.
John Monahan
