Viewcall Europe Plc of London, coming to market with an offer of shares for listing under rule 4.2, has signed a supply and co-operative development agreement with Cambridge-based Online Media Ltd, which will design digital set top boxes for Viewcall’s eponymous still image on demand system. The company announced its plans to float under Rule 4.2 last week. It is making an offer for subscription of between 1.076m and 1.184m new ordinary shares at 65 pence. Each share will have one warrant attached, and the warrants will become exercisable three months after the issue; for the first year thereafter, holders will be able to buy one new share at 90 pence for every five warrants they hold. For the following three years the exercise price rises 125 pence per share for every five warrants held. Viewcall’s system is due to be trialled in the late third and early fourth quarter with at least 1,000 terminals. Users will have access to interactive services such as shopping and local information, financial and health services and advertising. The company is implementing its fractal compression software, licensed from Walzer Corp of Jersey, on the Online Media television set-top box design that uses the ARM 7500 RISC processor. Viewcall itself is not carrying out any electronics research and development. Viewcall is emphasising the simplicity of its new system that will require the user to have only a standard television set and telephone line. Its pitch appears to be to capture the interim market by providing a relatively limited but still potentially powerful on-line information and transaction services system in operation now before full video-on-demand services become available in the future. Penetration of the latter is forecast to be very limited in the next five years.
