back to article Chinese walls come down for video calling

Chinese silicon providers Spreadtrum and Rahotech have announced a new chipset that brings video calling to handsets that straddle the TD-SCDMA/GSM divide. China has only just started deploying its 3G network, based on an internally developed technology called TD-SCDMA, the country having decided against paying royalties to …

COMMENTS

This topic is closed for new posts.
  1. Christian Berger

    Uhm, mobile (video) phones?

    What an ackward idea. Who would want to lug a phone around with oneself and be constantly disturbed by it.

  2. Iain
    Boffin

    Spotters Guide

    I once saw a man in a pub video calling someone. It was funny, he had to raise his voice considerably for the mic to pick him up at a distance where his mug was visible, so it just looked like he was shouting at his phone, 6 inches away from his face. Worse than Side-talkin'(TM?)

  3. Danny Thompson

    Videocalling is killed by the operators

    Videocalling will remain something not used until the network operators price it right. No one in their right mind is going to pay 60p a minute to videocall. The technology has been priced out of the reach of ordinary people. The exact same thing happened with SMS in the early days, then it was 60p per SMS and no one used the technology. As soon as the 10p a text appeared the public took up the service and the rest is history.

    There is a place for videocalling, but it will not become realised until the price is right, i.e. no more than for voice calling. And the network opertors will, once again through their own shortsightedness, lose another valuable tool to maintain or even raise ARPU.

  4. martinX
    Thumb Up

    This colour or that colour?

    Here's how I see videocalling being used: :Honey do you want this one, or this one? (holds up phone to view two similar doily-girly-fluffy things in the shops).

    Trivial usage, but isn't a lot of what we use tech for really trivial?

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Boffin

    The biggest problem with TD-SCDMA

    Is that no one trusts it to not have been designed with easy Chinese government eves dropping in mind from the get-go.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    @martinX

    well tech maybe trivial to you whilst you ponce around in doily-girly-frilly things, but the rest of us are building armies of robots for world domination.

    Trivial pah, you won't be saying that when you hear Astala Vista martinX uttered Hawkins style :)

This topic is closed for new posts.

Other stories you might like