There's nothing new under the sun, instant video streaming/broadcasting applications have been around now for a decade, ever since the days of Symbian S60, but arguably cellular bandwidth is only just now getting to the point where the mass market can both broadcast and receive video streams in decent quality. Twitter's recent Periscope launch, tying video broadcasting into your Twitter network is a good example of the latest attempt in this sphere - and a third party has popped up an early client for Periscope, with the similar name Telescope - and it works well. With the proviso that 99% of content is so boring or random that it's not worth watching in the first place....

From the Store entry:

Telescope for Periscope is the first Windows Phone app to provide access to Twitter's new Periscope service!

Right now you can sign up, follow users, and view broadcasts!

So there's access to the livestreams, but no interactivity, let alone broadcasting yourself - these features are 'coming'. In the meantime, here are some screenshots of Telescope in action:

It's all managed through Twitter, which is a really smart move, since Telescope launches with a massive potential community behind it from day one; (right) you're immediately presented by the latest livestreams from around the world....

The content ranges from random to boring to mindless to quirky to very occasionally interesting or topical. A ten minute tour of someone's kitchen appliances is probably not worth your time, but hanging out backstage at a radio station is slightly more interesting....

It's very early days for Telescope, of course - the spammers, trolls and adult streamers haven't moved in yet. Presumably Twitter is going to have to do some moderation of submitted Telescope streams, though that sounds incredibly labour intensive. Or maybe there will simply be 'report' functions so that the community as a whole works out what is acceptable?

You can grab Telescope here if you want to experience all this for yourself, bandwidth permitting!