At a recent gathering with my Gen-Y nieces and nephews, I realized I was on the far side of the mobile video adoption curve. They were very comfortable using their laptops and mobile devices to view movies and music clips and engage in two-way video chats with friends and family. It’s becoming clearer to me that some of video’s acceptance issues will be solved actuarially. In the meantime, the expected launch of a 3G version of the iPhone in June may just sway—I’m not saying it’s a tipping point!—more consumers to video. This will have direct implications for contact centers.

Telecom blogger Om Malik has neatly summarized the state of mobile video acceptance. He makes the point that on-demand video for mobile devices has stalled because most consumers don’t want to pay hefty monthly fees to watch movies and TV shows on small screens.

What about free Internet video? The story here seems to be one of battling standards. Flash is officially off the table for iPhone. Instead, Apple has decided to go with the slicker H.264 standard, which is now supported by YouTube. A special YouTube viewer on the iPhone will play clips that have been recoded in the higher-resolution H.264 format. The bad news is that only a small set of YouTube’s massive library has, so far, been transformed.

Let’s assume the soon-to-be-launched iPhone 2.0 supports download speeds of 200KB and concurrent voice and data. That sets the stage for the kind of multi-media contact center applications we’ve been blogging about. Video may really take off this time.

With mobile devices freeing consumer from their desktops, contact center agents will be able to push out instructional videos as they talk us through fixing appliances or repairing our cars. They’ll send blend-reality street directions that will guide us to a new store or restaurant.

And as our cultural attitudes about two-way video change, a call center agent’s face may become as familiar as a friend’s. Who knows, an agent may one day soon be part of someone’s “faves” list.