SMS Goes Video!!

Kirusa, the world’s leading vendor of Voice SMS and a leading developer of mobile value added services, in partnership with Tetco-Voxpilot, a specialist in voice/video/data convergence, haS announced the world’s first ever Video SMS product. Exclusive previews of the Kirusa Video SMS solution, deployed on Tetco-Voxpilot Open Media Platform, are being demonstrated at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Video SMS is the first in a series of 3G initiatives being developed by Kirusa as a logical extension to its current flagship Voice SMS offering.

The Kirusa Video SMS application is a combination of the most popular 3G technologies available today. The application provides captivating features such as sending Video SMS messages, replying to Video SMS messages, forwarding Video SMS messages, and group Video SMS messaging, greatly enhancing the reach of video messaging to a wider population of mobile users. Kirusa Video SMS messaging is useful in a wide variety of consumer and business situations specially tailored for 3G networks. Carriers can offer the application to drive 3G revenues leveraging their existing network infrastructure.

How it works?
Video SMS is a 3G service, based on video calling, and is used to send short video clips. The Video SMS application allows people to send live video via an SMS message.

A mobile subscriber sends a Video SMS message, similar to how he sends a Voice SMS message -- he dials the * (star) key followed by the mobile number of recipient from a 3G phone, and chooses to make a video call. The camera then gets activated, allowing the subscriber to record a live video message. After finishing the recording, the subscriber may drop the video call, or review and re-record the video SMS message. The Video SMS message is sent to the recipient as a simple SMS notification with an embedded DirectListen™ number, which when dialed to make a video call, takes the recipient directly to the Video SMS message he has received. After viewing the message, the recipient can reply to or forward the Video SMS message.

The industry says that Kirusa’s Video SMS application is easy to use, integrates seamlessly into how mobile subscribers use video calling, requires little or no learning curve, and works with the existing 3G infrastructure, and therein lies its appeal.

Well, it is now the time to pray that 3G comes to India soon because as per reports the deployment of 3G has further been delayed to late 2009-2010. It was earlier scheduled to launch by the 2008-22009. Till then lets wait with baited breath.