33 networks offering Push to Talk over cellular — MobileMonday Global: Industry News

^{Europe leads in PoC} 33 networks offering Push to Talk over cellular

1 Aug 2005 at 08:58 GMT Timo Poropudas

GSA, the Global mobile Suppliers Association has counted a total of 33 GSM/GPRS networks now offer commercial Push to Talk or PoC services. 15 of them are in Europe, 11 in Asia, 5 in the Americas, and 2 in the Middle East. Several more networks are in the deployment and pre-commercial testing phase. The GSA survey also shows that most new phones in 2005 launched by the leading manufacturers incorporate the push to talk feature. The survey identifies 57 phones announced in the market from 10 suppliers, for use on GSM/GPRS networks. Many of these devices support the Push to talk Over Cellular (PoC) standard, which was finally ratified last month by the Open Mobile Alliance. PoC enables a new real-time direct one-to-one and one-to-many voice communication service in cellular networks. The principle of communication behind the service is “push to talk”. Calls can be initiated to individuals and groups with a push of a key, and connection time is almost instantaneous. The service runs over standard GPRS networks where this functionality is supported. Thanks to the PoC open standard, conversations become possible across networks, nationally and internationally. The Push to talk service is a genuine differentiated voice service allowing operators to provide voice connections with lesser investment and offer new user experience albeit with lower voice quality, and builds new service revenues.