henry@garp.mit.edu (Henry Mensch) (10/16/89)
(Pinched from the [New York Times] w/o permission: Calif. -- Students at two campuses of the University of California, at Berkeley and Los Angeles, have become the test market for a new public video-telephone booth called Phonavision. Its developers claim that it is the world's first video telephone for the general public. Each of the campuses has one of the large, silver-color phone booths in its student union. Phonavision opened last Monday for a week of free demonstrations. Starting Monday, video phone calls from one campus to the other will cost $10 for three minutes. "We view all this semester as a test," said Stephen Strickland, chief executive officer of the Los Angeles-based company, Communications Technologies, that developed the video phones. "We want to be sure that when we do go to market with this service, it's as good as it can be." "We feel we're probably six months to a year away from having a system that we can go out and market," Strickland said. "I see them in airport lobbies, hotel lobbies, shopping centers, indoor high-traffic locations." Video telephones are already widely used in business, he added. Phonavision callers speak to each other on standard telephone receivers. A snapshot-size image of their own face is projected on one half of a small screen, and the other half shows a picture of the person to whom they are talking. As a caller talks, the video screen shows small movements of the mouth or face. But sudden movements mean a distorted picture. With a tilt of a caller's head, for example, the image will move to the side in separate parts, starting with the top of the head and moving down in a wavelike motion. Annalee Andres, a sophomore from Santa Ana, Calif., who has not yet selected a major, was one of the first students to try out Berkeley's new video phone. She and her friends crowded around the phone booth in the Martin Luther King Jr. Student Center, taking turns talking to a student from UCLA. "I think it has a long way to go yet, but it's really cool," she said. "I can really see where it's leading." Ms. Andres speculated on the effects that widespread use of video phones would have. "What if they catch you and you're just out of the shower?" she asked. "It'll change dating." Daniel Ciruli, a junior from Tucson, Ariz., majoring in computer science, was enthusiastic about his trial session, but he said the fee would keep him away in the future. "It's a new toy," he said. "But at $10 for three minutes, with only one other Phonavision, it's not going to be something that students are beating down the door to use." The video phone booth offers other services: recording and dealing in videotapes and a place to send and receive fax messages. The booth accepts $1, $5, $10 and $20 bills, as well as Mastercard and Visa. Gary Li, a senior from Beijing, who is majoring in electrical engineering, started setting up Berkeley's phone booth in April. Since then he has spent about 20 hours a week repairing kinks in the system. Berkeley and UCLA were chosen as tryout spots for the new service because most students know somebody at the other campus, said Strickland, the company's chief executive. "That's a place where we can get novelty use," he said, adding that "Berkeley and UCLA have a reputation for being front-runner schools -- places that are innovative, that like new technology." Strickland said his company has spent almost three years developing Phonavision. He would not disclose total costs, but priced the video phone booths at $50,000 each. # Henry Mensch / <henry@garp.mit.edu> / E40-379 MIT, Cambridge, MA # <hmensch@uk.ac.nsfnet-relay> / <henry@tts.lth.se> / <mensch@munnari.oz.au>