Tech Untangled

AT&T/Cingular started with a limited commercial rollout of the Video Share service in June 2007. Now, AT&T Video Share goes “nationwide” in nearly 160 Markets. While Europe has seen video calling services earlier (albeit with limited success), this is the first-ever service in the U.S. that enables mobile subscribers to share live video over their wireless phones while on a voice call.

This is still one-way live streaming-video feeds where one has to manually switch streaming direction (making it half-duplex video calling). There is still a laundry list of drawbacks with this service. I’m still skeptical that this service will catchup anytime soon.

Video Share works exclusively over the AT&T 3G wireless network. So the real good news here is that AT&T has expanded its 3G footprint, which was earlier limited to a few select cities. With 3G, users will get faster data download speeds using a technology called HSDPA. Another technology called HSUPA will increase upload speeds, but this will come much later.