A system and method for providing video telephone call capabilities through a combination of standard audio telephone lines and video cable TV lines. A person at a video telephone may place a call to a person who does not have a video telephone but who does have cable television service. The system transmits the audio portion of the conversation over standard telephone lines in the manner of a conventional, non-video telephone call. The video portion of the conversation, on the other hand, is concurrently transmitted over in-place cable television equipment to be viewed on the call recipient's television. Alternately, protocol conversion may be utilized in the telephone network to allow a caller and a recipient each having respectively incompatible video telephone equipment to freely communicate with one another.