PARIS, Dec 6: What to do 30 feet under the sea when you realize you’ve left the oven on? Call home of course, and without delay from France Telecom’s underwater phone box.

The telecoms giant has tested a prototype system that allows those above water to talk to divers in the deep.

The kit is aimed at the military, archaeologists and oil rigs, but the long-term plan could be to net a new breed of clientele in competitive times for the mobile phone industry.

Red Sea divers could keep talking even when they’re kitted out in scuba gear, says co-inventor Philippe Levasseur.

“This project is still evolving but we envisage that some day small diving clubs would be keen to have this system for extra safety and to communicate with divers without them having to come up to the surface,” he said.

But divers will need more than loose change to use the aqua phone, which is years away from being a consumer must-have.

The prototype cost 23 million Euros to make. If France Telecom takes the product to market, as it hopes to by the end of 2002, it will probably charge a hefty 50 million Euros.

Engineers spent the best part of a year testing out the system at the Qait Bay centre in Alexandria, Egypt.

The prototype is dubbed a phone box as while the unit itself is wireless, the diver needs to be attached to it via a cable. The mobile relay system to make and receive calls is housed inside a float on the surface.

There is no speaker or earpiece but a special mouthpiece with a membrane that allows vibrations to be carried through the teeth into the ear channels. The mouthpiece is integrated into the diver’s usual regulator, or breathing equipment.

Scuba diver Laurent Labieux says it is easy to use.

“It isn’t that much of a change from the usual diving equipment — the only thing that is a bit different is an extra keypad panel, but that doesn’t get in the way” he said.—Reuters