Multimedia shopping services are coming rapidly to a phone box near you, John Hutchinson reports
AFTER years of talk about the potential of interactive multimedia public phone kiosks, BT has decided to put its money where its mouth is. It has installed 200 of its new Touchpoint terminals in the M25 region, and plans to have up to 2,500 available nationally within two years.
It is billing Touchpoint as a kiosk network, delivering 20 channels of free information, covering everything from the latest sport results to local restaurant guides and street maps. Customers will only pay if they want to print out screen information, or if they use added-value services such as ski condition reports or horoscopes.
Current Touchpoint units are exclusively information-based, and don't provide ordinary payphone facilities. But new kiosks due to be installed in the autumn will feature true multimedia capabilities, including telephony, e-mail, Internet connection and fax.
The Touchpoints now appearing in motorway service stations, rail terminals and shopping centres feature an interactive touch screen.
Customers simply press the menu items that interest them and the information appears. If users want a hard copy, they insert 20p or a choice of credit or charge cards, and a laser printer delivers an A4 black-and-white sheet in about a minute.
Touchpoint is being targeted as a direct rival to Internet-based providers such as Compuserve and AOL, as well as TV-based services including Teletext, but with some added tricks.
If users want to send flowers or book an airline ticket, a touch on the relevant screen section connects them free of charge to a callcentre where they can buy using their credit cards.
Touchpoint shopping does not yet extend to being able to key in card details to buy products and services directly, but that could only be a matter of time.
Ann Machin, Touchpoint marketing manager, says: "We have the technology to provide full electronic shopping, but people are still wary about giving their details over a service like this. Until there is greater market acceptance of the idea, we are effectively offering electronic browsing."
BT scientists are working on systems where a customer could, for example, key in a three-dimensional model of her dining room and try out different combinations of furniture and decor before buying.
Most of the information on Touchpoint is free to customers because the companies providing the content pay a fee to BT. But Machin insists that BT will keep control of what is displayed to avoid it being cluttered by "dreadful advertisements."
Machin expects that as Touchpoint achieves national coverage, its content will be 80 per cent national and 20 per cent local or specific to particular types of location.
For example, terminals could include guides to local business services and tourist information. Touchpoints may also start appearing in retail chains, with interactive services for, say, DIY products.
BT views competition from other payphone specialists with multimedia products as helping to drive the market forward. "There will always be a requirement for ordinary payphones, but potentially we envisage multimedia replacing a great many of them in the next five years," Machin predicts.
