The French government has been showing off the fruits of its latest natonal effort in telecommunications – a colour video telephone that transmits moving images alongside speech and data over telephone lines. The Post, Telecommunications and Space Minister Paul Quiles claims that the technology of the prototype phone is more advanced than anything Japan has got, and says he hopes to have a version for professional use available next year for about $6,000, and a mass market version at $1,000 by 1995. The phone consists of video screen, small camera and coder-decoder and five companies, including Matra SA and Thomson SA, have put in bids to manufacture the things. The government intends to order components for the phones by the end of the year, and place orders for 100,000 finished phones at the end of 1992; it expects manufacturers to take two years to build marketable prod ucts from the components, for sale by France Telecom. Matra has al ready taken a licence to manufact ure the video phone as a commercial product that it would offer itself.
