Nice phone. Now, who ya gonna call?

By MICHAEL FOREMAN

South African company Buzzcam promised a glimpse of the future last month when it launched one of the first videophones available in New Zealand.

Unfortunately, all the company proved was that apparently glittering technology is not always what is seems.

At first glance, Buzzcam's videophone looked promising enough. It is an ordinary desktop telephone with an LCD display mounted on it.

Leon De Lange, Australia and New Zealand chief executive of Busscam (the company is spelling its name differently here), said the big problem facing videophones in the past was the difficulty of transmitting a high-bandwidth video signal over ordinary telephone lines. Such videophones have suffered from unacceptably poor image quality or a low frames-per-second rate, showing a series of still images rather than proper video.

Buzzcam's answer is to use clever compression software and an Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) line.

Though this combination produced a moving image of reasonable quality during a demonstration call to the company's head office in South Africa, it severely restricts the practicality of the phone.

First, there is the question of the ISDN line. ISDN lines are becoming increasingly popular for desktop videoconferencing systems - research firm IDC estimates that 2.1 million such units will be in place by 2003 - but they cost between $110 and $175 to set up, depending on the carrier, and carry a monthly charge of $90 to $150.

ISDN call charges are coming down in price, but a 128K connection (as used by Busscam) to Australia still costs more than $1 a minute.

Then there is the cost of the phone. Busscam is asking $6000 plus an "annual licence fee" of $500 a year for businesses, and $50 a year for domestic users.

This compares with $3000 to $5000 for a basic PC-based videoconferencing system.

But the phone's big weakness is that it is not compatible with any other system unless you buy specialised hardware, which, says Mr De Lange, costs between $50,000 and $100,000..

This means that for all practical purposes, Busscam customers will be able to call only other Busscam customers - and they are somewhat thin on the ground.

The Busscam phone book has 73 users in South Africa and 37 in Britain, plus an unspecified number in Ghana, Nigeria, the United Arab Emirates, Germany, the Netherlands and California.

Mr De Lange said the company was now targeting the business market after attempts in South Africa to market the phone to families with children overseas - under the brand Famcam - failed.

Busscam is looking for distributors in New Zealand and Australia. The company believes the Olympic Games will act as a spur to sales in this region.