It would appear that FaceTime is built on top of open standards, is Steve more explicit than that in the original presentation (for example, does he say that access to Apple's FaceTime servers will be available openly, etc.)?
If you watch the actual presentation (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1edQuxclUs&feature=playe...), Steve makes a clear distinction between being built on open standards and what they plan to do. What he means by going to standards bodies and making Facetime an open industry standard isn't really clear, but it is clear they didn't do that.
This can be said of almost every single video implementation ever. Nearly every single one utilizes H.323, SIP, RTP, H.2XX codecs, NAT traversal (ICE, STUN, etc), SDP, ISDN, etc.
Each one of those protocols has many optional characteristics and properties that don't operate together unless they're planned or someone has created the super-stack which is fully compliant with every deviation from the specification. Even then, many of the specifications aren't truly specifications (SIP), and even some of the specifications have portions for customization (SIP) that don't require adherence to specification (recommendation).
This literally means nothing other than you could probably reverse engineer it and create something that would work with it. Until they change it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facetime#Standards
It would appear that FaceTime is built on top of open standards, is Steve more explicit than that in the original presentation (for example, does he say that access to Apple's FaceTime servers will be available openly, etc.)?