British Telecommunications Plc’s prototype videophones on show at the Ideal Home Exhibition Plus at London’s Earls Court may be more prototypical than the company is letting on – it seems that their software is being run on a personal computer lurking behind a pillar. According to a spokesman on the phone company’s stand, the company is using the personal computer simply so that the keys on the videophone can be disabled to avoid sticky fingers from interfering with the thing’s functions. However, Amstrad Plc’s version of the same GEC Plc Marconi-built machine never made it to the stand at CeBit because of software problems that affected the picture. One of Computergram’s reporters button-holed Amstrad chairman Alan Sugar in the departure lounge of Hannover airport, and he confirmed that the videophones were not shown at CeBit because of their picture quality. The company has also said, however, that the problems are easily rectified and will be sorted out within the next week or so. An Amstrad spokesman later described the problem as sound band interference causing bubbles to appear on the screen sound-on-vision, they call it in the television world. British Telecom denies that it has encountered similar problems, despite the fact that the guts of the two machines are the same. To complicate matters further, a spokesman for GEC Marconi has said that, yes, there have been problems but that they are not caused by sound band interference as mentioned by Amstrad. He refused to be drawn, however, on exactly what they were. At present, it is not possible to see how efficiently the phones will operate over regular phone lines, or whether this has caused the glitches, because the BT stand at the Ideal Home Exhibition has the two handsets linked directly via the personal computer and neither Amstrad nor BT has demonstrated them over the telephone network. Both companies say they will deliver on time. BT is quoting a price of UKP800 for a pair of the toys.
