Can this man build the video PSTN?

Skype rolled out Skype 4.0 too much fanfare about its improved video quality, but improved voice quality won’t matter much if your video buddy isn’t running Skype. Scott Wharton thinks he might have just the solution. The former marketing mastermind behind Broadsoft, spun out to start Vidtel last year. The Vidtel video service is supposed to be so easy that even your grandma can place a video call. Pretty cool, but over the long term, though, what might be more interesting is how Wharton and Co. hope to build the video-equivalent of the PSTN, a network that lets anyone place a video call to anyone else regardless of whether they’re using Skype or Cisco or any other video system. I caught up with Scott (on Skype, of course). Here’s what he had to say…

So Scott. You’ve launched this new company, Vidtel, tell us about it about the service its delivering.

It’s a phone service with video. We’ve got two offerings. One is a $14.95/month unlimited video calling and video mail service and a phone number with e911. If you make a call off-net, it’s 3.9 cents per minute.We also have an offer for $29.95/month which includes all the above plus unlimited voice calling in North America and find-me-follow-me.So it’s the same or less as your home phone line but also includes video calling.

Whose endpoints are you using for the service?

Our initial endpoint is from Grandstream.We’ll add new endpoints later this year including different video phones, PC soft phones, mobile soft phones, and any other device that does video (game players, TVs, surveillance cameras, etc.)We wanted to start out with a relatively simple offer where there was a market void and add more options later.

Do you have any customers?

We just launched a few weeks ago but already have a fewhundred people on our service.Most of them are consumers but there are quite a few business customers as well. We’re getting inundated with interest from channels – especially those who service the small-to-medium business market.To quote a recent discussion with a video VAR, “We’ve been waiting 18 years for a service like this.”

I’m a fan of Skype video, but once you get past the kick of using video, all too often I just turn video off in my calls and I don’t think I’m alone. What makes you think that people will want a video service?

Video isn’t always appropriate. Sometimes you just want to talk or text chat. Video can be more intrusive and annoying. Sometimes you want to be in passive communications and not to look at one another. But sometimes it’s very important. There is a reason why people go to great lengths to meet in person and fly thousands of miles to get “face time”.It’s all about putting it in the right context and not forcing someone to see another at all times.

Ok, but aren’t there video services already out there? Why did we yet another video service?

There’s a high-end video conferencing market but you need really expensive gear and an IT manager to figure it all out.It’s great for Fortune 500 companies with a million bucks to burn, but it’s not appropriate for small business.On the low-end, you’ve got Skype and others which, while unbeatable for the price, require tech-savvy people on both sides.Their computers are not always on, either.And don’t try to get any help or support – it’s not an option! Think about it - most people still use regular phones for voice instead of computers because the quality of the experience is better and they are more convenient.We see similar things happening in the video market as well.

The other vision is that people are using these things as islands, Skype-to-Skype video calls. All these networks and devices are proprietary so part of our vision is to create software that would link together anyone to call each other via video no matter what device or service they use – just like we do for voice today.It’s ridiculous to think you might pause before making a voice call to decide if they are on the same network – you just call the other person and it works.

How are you going to connect these different video islands?

We are building proprietary software that will connect Skype, Google, and other IM clients as well as links to mobile phones. At the same time, we’re going to federate to other service providers around the world that offer video services. There are two challenges here in making all of this work. There’s the pure interoperability challenge of getting them all onto a common network and making sure it works together. But today, even if different endpoints could share video today they still would need to find one another. There are no directories out there today to tell you if an endpoint has video or not.

Why not rely on the Enum standard? There are standards for addressing and then there’s the directory itself.Enum in and of itself doesn’t do anything for you. What you need is a service that will tell you if an endpoint is video-enabled or not. So I know if I call Dave, his endpoint is video-enabled.

Yes, but there are Enum services out there today.

That’s true, but none of these services tell you what media you have. They just connect voice calls, but they don’t tell you if the other person has video. What we aim to do is nothing short of making video calling universal, similar to the PSTN.

What’s your progress so far with the business?

We got our initial funding this summer, built our team and started building our service.We “soft launched” in December and started putting commercial users on our network.Now we’re focused on primarily on acquiring customers and understanding the user experience through both direct efforts, getting reseller channels up and building these gateways so you can call to a Vidtel user and vice versa. Later in 2009 we’ll start deploying services that work with other video networks.