Those looking to stay in contact without actually making contact have a host of vendors waiting to hook them up with a new video phone.
Several Taiwanese companies have been producing video phones for a few years, essentially adding a screen and a camera to the otherwise humble telephone handsets.
Leadtek Research says enquiries for its video phone rose 60 per cent last month, with transactions for some lines up 30 per cent.
'I foresee an increase again this month, because Sars is an ongoing problem,' said David Lin, sales manager of Leadtek's Communication Products Business Unit.
Video phone vendors are making products for a variety of standards.
The most popular and easy to use is the public switched telephone networks (PSTN) standard, which uses the H.324 protocol and is also known as POTS, which stands for plain old telephone service.
