Push to talk: as big as SMS

Stuart Corner
Monday, 17 October 2005 19:40

IT Industry - Deals

The global GSM Suppliers Association (GSA) says it believes that push to talk over cellular could represent "one of the biggest opportunities since cellular telephony itself and SMS".

In a just released white paper the GSA says: "The need for the service has a historical precedent and the financial advantage that it brings has already been proved. From the users' perspective, it adds directly to the essence of cellular; that of keeping people closely in touch and together."

In support of this view it says that "The PoC open standard has been finalised by OMA [the Open Mobile Alliance] and is stimulating widespread commercial deployments worldwide, supported by a large variety and availability of PoC-enabled phones for use on GSM data networks. Thanks to the PoC open standard, conversations become possible across networks, nationally and internationally."

According to the GSA's latest statistics, all major operators have plans to introduce PTT and as at the end of July there were 33 commercial PTT services on GSM/GPRS networks, dozens of ongoing deployments and trials worldwide and 57 push to talk phones on the market.

Push to talk is, however only the first of many push-to services in the pipeline. "The PTT technical and service evolution roadmap extends beyond voice to deliver exciting new data and multimedia applications, which are typically described as "Push To" or Push To X" (PTX) services. PTX enables an enhanced new way of communicating, eg for image sharing, document sharing, the streaming of video and music, and more."

Examples given included:
Push to View - real-time photo sharing experience; Push to Ask - fast response to asking a question in real-time, without looking at the display; Push to Find - push location to friends and colleagues; Push to Hear - ringtones and music tracks; Push to All - the voice equivalent to instant messaging; Push to Play - games; Push to Share - albums, archives, videos