Amstrad launch Videophone service

[mazzarak]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3658722.stm

another attempt to launch a service that seems perfectly sensible to us, but positively frightening to the average Joe...

[George]

Video calls made via the E3 handset incur a 50p charge as well as usual call costs. Until these companies stop trying to make money off of subscription or per call services and just sell video phones that connect via normal broadband connections with no added fees this idea is just not going to take off. People are too skeptical and when they see you're going to try and charge them to use the "FREE" internet knowing all it takes is 2 compatible devices (and a good network) to make video calls. Why should they pay for something they can do for free? They already paid for the phone AND their internet connection so paying again to connect over your already paid for internet connection just doesn't make sense.

Amstrad said the images appearing on the E3's colour screen will not be TV quality but are likely to match what is possible on a PC using a dial-up net account.That's not saying much considering they're comparing a connection over broadband to a dialup connection :ermm: