{"id":2054,"date":"2011-03-24T12:37:09","date_gmt":"2011-03-24T16:37:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/adam-jackson.net\/blog\/?p=2054"},"modified":"2011-03-24T12:37:09","modified_gmt":"2011-03-24T16:37:09","slug":"facetime-as-an-open-standard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/2011\/03\/24\/facetime-as-an-open-standard\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2605 FaceTime as an “Open Standard”"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Photo via Flickr & Benm.at<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

At WWDC 2010 during the iPhone 4 introduction, Steve shows a list of “standards” that FaceTime is built on and then announces the plans to make FaceTime open adding that it will be shipping on tens of millions of devices this year. Most of us assumed that this meant devices not manufactured by Apple but, instead, Apple blew us away with millions of iPhone 4 and iPod touch sales in 2010 followed by millions of iPad 2s with FaceTime so far in 2011. Alright, Steve promised 10s of millions of devices and followed through on that promise.<\/p>\n

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What about those other devices?<\/p>\n

Radvision weighs in shortly<\/a> after the announcement last year:<\/p>\n

Unlike the marketing slides above, open-sourcing the standard \u2013 which in layman terms means opening it up like Cisco has recently done with its\u00a0Telepersence Interoperability Protocol<\/a> (TIP) \u2013 will enable others to interoperate with Apple. This means that FaceTime users will be able to use video calling for calling their friends, family and colleagues, even if they are not iPhone4 users who happen to be located in a WiFi zone.<\/p>\n

This can be achieved by either implementing the Apple protocol on the client side (what some have speculated Skype, for instance, might do) or via bridges and gateways that companies like RADVISION supply, which interoperate with the different standards and codecs (which is what Skype will, most probably do, just like\u00a0with their Skype For SIP solution<\/a>).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Also later on Radvision<\/a>:<\/p>\n

What I want to deal with here is a slew of open questions about the openness of FaceTime. And to start, you should read this post by Ajit Jaokar about\u00a0possible meanings of open<\/a>. Which ones can be covered or limited by Apple\u2019s FaceTime?<\/p>\n