AT&T Launches One-Way Video Calling

After a seven-month wait, AT&T has finally gone live with its "video share" service, which lets you make one-way video calls on your handset.

The new service just went active today (it was first announced way back in January), and it works on four AT&T phones: the Sync, the A717, and the A727 (all Samsung phones), plus the older LG CU500v. I got a chance to try a few video-share calls back in March, and it looked workable enough—not TV quality, mind you, but about as solid as the streaming video clips on most 3G phones, with a lag time of only about a second or so. Once you initiate a video call (to another "video share"-ready phone on AT&T, naturally), you can talk to the other party over the speakerphone and fire off text messages, and you can reverse the direction of the call at any time.

Of course, the big question about AT&T's video share service has been the price, and now we know: about $10 a month for 60 minutes of video conferencing, or $5/month for 25 minutes—not bad for making an occasional video call, but pricey for anyone looking to make weekly video conference calls. You can also place video share calls without a subscription for 35 cents a minute...ouch.

Related:
AT&T's Video Share Service Goes Live [Phone Scoop]
Product page [AT&T]