Actor William Shatner appeared in Toronto this morning to help Rogers Wireless announce their new video calling service, the first in North America to turn cellphones into webcams and allow for face-to-face video conversations. Rogers also used the event to announce a partnership with YouTube.com which will allow users to watch the top YouTube videos using their multimedia handsets.

Rogers Wireless Senior Vice President John Boynton began the event by placing a video call to Shatner backstage. With the video connection on-screen, we could see the Golden Globe Winner and Star Trek icon being doted upon by two young make-up artists before reaching out to pick up his phone and bring his face into full view. After a quick chat where Bill explained the girls as part of his “meditation”, he hung up and came out on-stage to the wall of cameras waiting for him.

There John Boynton showed him how to download a video from YouTube.com, namely a 1978 clip of Shatner himself singing Elton John’s Rocketman (scroll down to watch). In what has become a signature part of his modern day appeal, he smiled good naturedly as the painfully cheesy clip played out.

“Oh dear,” he playfully winced.

“Canada Has always been known for its great talent” Shatner said to the crowd of reporters. “Now to be on the cutting edge of technology, I’ve very proud to see that happening. I never thought that video (mobile communication) would come out of science fiction and now its science fact. It’s incredible, I’m so proud to be here and be a part of this announcement”.

The service is called Rogers Vision and its just an initial launch for now, restricted to just one cellphone, the Samsung A706, and will work only within “Ontario’s Golden Horeshoe” area, meaning Oshawa to Niagara Falls and the Greater Toronto Area. The plan is to expand the coverage to include other areas of Canada by the end of this year. The service itself is only a Canadian one, meaning you will not be able to make video calls to the United States or overseas. This is because the technology involved is currently limited to using Rogers’ HSDPA (3G) High-Speed network which has yet to expand across the country.

So if you and a friend both own Samsung A706 phones, and you both live within the “Golden Horeshoe” then you can start video calling each other. If not, well you have to wait for things to evolve further. The service is $5 per month, that gets you 50 minutes of video calling minutes, which are separate from voice minutes, with an additional charge of 25 cents per minute that runs over. When you place a call, you simply dial in the phone number and then press the video button to connect. The person on the other end will be given your name and the option to not accept the call. The receiver has to approve the video connection for it to work. Once up and running, you’re free to point the cellphone’s camera at yourself or at your environment, make lighting adjustments, etc. Its possible to make a one-way video call, meaning that the person on the other end can see you, but you can’t see them.

With the YouTube.com partnership, Rogers will be adding a “Best of YouTube” video selection to their Video On Demand cellphone service. There will be 50 clips chosen each week and these will join a selection of videos from MTV, Jay Leno, ET Canada, CNN, The Weather Network, CTV, CBC, and the Cartoon Network. This service too is also restricted to the Samsung A706 phone and to customers in the “Golden Horseshoe” area of Ontario.

Here's the Rocketman YouTube video played at the event, taken from the 1978 Science Fiction Awards