At last, iPhone with both front and rear-facing video cameras…

FaceTime, the iPhone video chat app, coupled with Skype’s Nokia N900 video chat client, means mobile video should finally be going mainstream. GigaOm’s new report predicts 11 billion video calls by 2015.

Couldn’t agree more with Michael Roston’s description of iPhone 4 FaceTime’s shortcomings or rather, the failure of the network to support video conferencing.

While there were high hopes for iPhone 4’s built-in front-facing and back-facing video cameras for video chat, the reality has been disappointing. Although the camera quality is good, the service doesn’t work reliably over WiFi.

Roston points out “a really useful capability would allow you to video chat with someone not only on your iPhone 4 to their iPhone 4 or Mac, but to video chat with anyone over WiFi who has a program on their device that supports video conferencing”.

At Vidtel, we could not agree more.  In fact, our vision is to enable any video conferencing-capable device to connect seamlessly with any other.   Currently, we are working on connecting standard, proprietary video devices to each other over our network, accessible as a subscription fee.

Today, even standard video conferencing devices do not natively interoperate.  You would think this problem would be diminishing over time. In fact, the opposite is true, amplifying the need for a third-party such as Vidtel to launch a type of video conversion engine to seamless connect all standard video devices.  A video equivalent of the PSTN (public-switched telephone network or plain ol’ phone network) if you will.

The word on the street (surmised from the software development kit) is that Apple has developed API support for the iPad to test if your iPad has a Front Facing Camera – exactly what’s been missing for video chat. Rumor has it “accept” and “decline” icons for video on the iPad have turned up. Others report it’s been stripped out.  We’ll keep our fingers crossed that it could make it into iPad 1.0, even if it would be awkward holding up the device for video conferencing.

Vidtel‘s plan is to develop gateways to proprietary video communications systems, including Apple, so that Apple’s FaceTime will interoperate with other video communications applications.