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Broadband Access
WorldGate Adds H.323 Communications Protocol To Video Phone
New And Emerging H.364 Standards Part Of Package
by Jim Barthold
WorldGate Communications has taken a step to add
backwards-compatible H.323 communications protocols to its
Ojo video phone to make it compatible with older video
telephony codecs as well as new and emerging H.364
standards which are already a part of Ojo’s infrastructure. The
compmany said the phones would be able to communicate
with video phones using H.263 and G279 video and audio
codecs.
The move was originally made to help an unnamed customer
meet federal guidelines to be backward compatible and as it
turned out, it was something the rest of the market could use
as well, said Hal Krisbergh, WorldGate’s chairman/CEO.
“There are several issues on compatibility; it’s not just the
video codec, it’s the audio codec and the communications
protocol, which is SIP,” Krisbergh said. “We deal with
customers’ issues and one of them is always a concern that …
we would be proprietary. We put in backward compatibility so
that nobody could be concerned.”
Video phones, Krisbergh conceded, are taking off slowly. Ojo,
which works on any broadband delivery network and is sold
through retail and directly to service providers, is no exception.
“It’s not a big market yet,” he said, adding that backward
compatibility is “should facilitate the growth of the market
because it eliminates those kinds of (compatibility) issues
and concerns.”
The market, while evolving, is also drawing attention from the
big service providers, Krisbergh maintained.
“The large RBOCs and cable operators are putting our RFPs
(requests for proposals) and we’re going through an intense
RFP process with several of them,” he said.
The thing that will drive video telephony, he said, is a reliable
service.
“The reason video telephony hasn’t happened is because it
hasn’t met expectations; most stores we retail with say the
problem with video telephony wasn’t selling it, it (the phone)
just came back because it didn’t meet expectations,”
Krisbergh said. “Eight-seven percent of our customers say we
exceed expectations. With Ojo, it’s not longer an issue; we
have almost no returns.”
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