Subject: [NEXTEL-1] FastMobile Pushes to Talk

From: [email-masked]
Date: Thu, 04 Sep 2003 00:57:43 -0400

FastMobile Pushes to Talk
09.03.03

LONDON -- fastmobile today launched its push-to-talk mobile service, fastchat,
into the European mobile retail market, unveiling a commercial alliance with
Wizcom Limited, a part of Caudwell Group, the UK's market-leading mobile
communications provider.

From October, fastmobile's 'fastchat' voice-text application will be sold
throughout the UK by Phones4U, Caudwell Group's mobile phone retail chain. The
agreement marks the first time that any voice-text service will be available to
European consumers via high street retail stores.

fastchat combines a walkie-talkie-style instant voice-text facility with the
latest multimedia messaging capabilities - including picture, video, e mail and
text - into one easy-to-use application that enables subscribers to chat with
friends across mobile carriers, handset models and also to PCs globally.

The service is currently suitable for Symbian Series 60 handsets including Nokia's
7650 and 3650, the Sony Ericsson P800 and the new Motorola A920. New Series
60-based phones due for launch include the Nokia N-Gage, Nokia 6600, Samsung
SGH-D700 and Siemens SX1, and plans are also in hand to dramatically increase the
number of handsets in time for the Christmas sales season.

The service requires no special hardware to be added to either the mobile handsets
or to operators' networks, and does not affect other network operator services.
fastchat will be sold as an application to existing phones and as a value added
service to new purchasers.

James Tagg, European managing director of fastmobile, said: "fastchat works
out-of-the-box on all the UK's mobile networks, meaning we've never had complex
interoperability agreements with which to contend, and also meaning Phones4U's
fastchat customers do not have to worry about whether their friends and contacts
are on the same or a compatible network in order to use it. "We're naturally
aiming to make fastchat the de facto standard for push-to-talk services in the UK
and Europe, and now we have significant first-to-market advantage.

"With Caudwell Group leading the way, we're continuing to talk to additional
channels to market worldwide, including other retailers, phone manufacturers and
mobile network operators," he added. The appeal of fastchat is different to each
market channel. Tagg continued: "For phone manufacturers, the mass availability of
a next-generation messaging service could provide additional impetus to sales of
new phones, while to the phone retailer, the benefits include improved margin on
sales and the opportunity to upsell.

"To the mobile operator, there will be an increase in average revenue per user
through a surge in data network usage, and for the consumer voice-text messaging
is likely to be less intimidating than, for example, new 3G video-messaging
services."
Ian O'Reilly, director of Wizcom, the mobile value added services arm of the
Caudwell Group added: "The push-to-talk communications feature has been very
successful in the US. Our launch of fastchat will be one of the first applications
to truly use the always-on capabilities of GPRS in the UK and, strategically, we
believe this type of application is exactly the type of service that will produce
incremental revenues in the consumer market."

fastchat is comparable with North American operator Nextel's push-to-talk service,
which brings that operator around 20% of its revenue. Several mobile network
operators worldwide are either trialing or about to trial fastchat.
fastchat makes messaging easier, quicker, potentially cheaper and more fun then
other current forms of messaging, enabling mobile phone users to get more from
their handsets and make a real difference to their work and social life

http://www.unstrung.com/document.asp?doc_id=39488

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