A few weeks ago, I was in Istanbul with some customers and prospects. As I've written many times in this blog, the promise of adding video to an already existing voice and/or text mobile application is compelling to use, and compelling as a value-added service to offer.  So it's a win-win given the right business model. 

 

Given the 3G networks available in Turkey, I figured it would be a snap to actually demo a mobile video app to these customers and prospects so I called into a customer IVVR demo that shows your airplane seat visually and how to change it from your phone. But alas, there was the error message "no video service, video call failed." Huh?

 

Well, I just so happened to be with the service provider that my phone was using at the time and they made a few phone calls. It was indeed not offered yet since they haven't figured out the payment plan. Would it be part of the monthly fee? Would it be charged per use? Would you have to buy video prepaid cards to use the service? Since I was roaming, how would the roaming charges work? 

 

These issues will all be worked out, but it was an important reminder to me about why video telephony, like most new technologies, takes a little longer to become ubiquitous than some might think. It's the same to me as VoIP was 10 years ago, and that's why I'm bullish on mobile video.