The first stages of testing the H.324 standard have been completed at the International Multimedia Teleconferencing Consortium, with 13 vendors testing their video products over standard telephone lines. H.324 is a set of protocols that determine how video, speech and data are to be shared simultaneously over a modem connection on a single analog telephone line. The vendors – all members of the Multimedia Teleconferencing Consortium – met at the US National Institute of Standards & Technology in Gaithersburg, Maryland to see if their products would work over the standard, which is part of the International Telecommunications Union’s larger, umbrella H.320 standard. Use and acceptance of the standard is currently being driven by the inclusion of H.324-based video phone applications in multimedia personal computers – as well as the popularized ‘granny phone’ angle that is clearly designed to elicit sympathy for US-based multimedia- enabled kids wanting only to talk to their relations in Australia. Teleconferencing Consortium president Neil Starkey was confident: By committing to open standards, the industry has created an environment that will fuel its own growth, he said. Developments in conferencing applications based around standard telephones have occurred at an astonishing rate: last November, the H.324 standard for conferencing over standard telephone lines was ratified; in March, developers met to test the interoperability of their prototypes; and this latest testing is the culmination of a series of monthly meetings sponsored by the Teleconferencing Consortium. Vendors testing their products with the Teleconferencing Consortium were 8×8 Inc; Acer Advanced Labs Inc; Creative Labs Inc; Intel Corp; Lucent Microelectronics Inc; Multimedia Access Corp; Cirrus Logic Inc’s RSA Communications Inc; Smith Micro Inc’s Video Products Division; Sony Corp; Teles AG; VDOnet Corp; Vivo Software Inc and Winbond Systems Lab Inc.
