Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Phones4U to offer walkie-talkie feature

From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 02 Sep 2003 13:32:16 -0400

Phones4U to offer walkie-talkie feature

Fastchat available for smartphones

By Tony Dennis: Tuesday 02 September 2003, 14:26

THE WORLD'S first commercial deployment of a Push-to-talk (walkie-talkie) service
over cellular outside of the USA has just been announced.

The software vendor concerned, Fastmobile, has formed a commercial alliance with
Wizcom Ltd, which is part of the Caudwell Group, to offer this service to British
subscribers. The necessary module, Fastchat, will initially only be available for
Symbian OS compatible phones in stores run by Cauldwell's retail arm, Phones4U.

However, the two companies hope to dramatically increase the number of handsets
which can run Fastchat in time for the Xmas sales boom.  Essentially what Fastchat
does is to take advantage of a handset's ability to record a voice message, parcel
that up, send it out via GPRS and then play the message back again on the
recipient's handset.

Just as if the handset were a walkie-talkie. Fastmobile has effectively jumped the
gun, of course. Back at the GSM World conference in Cannes last February,
Ericsson, Nokia and Siemens got together to announce that something called IMS (IP
Multimedia System) would form GSM's answer to Nextel.

This US network already has a push-to-talk facility courtesy of Motorola's iDEN
technology. Nonetheless, a spokesperson for Fastmobile said his company intended
to work towards making Fastchat compatible with whatever standard emerges.

Fastchat offers some neat extra facilities besides push-to-talk. It has a
bunch of built in IM (Instant Messaging) clients including one for MSN
Messenger and offers 'presence' so you can see which of your buddies
are currently online.

The INQ has tried Fastchat - it works but the functionality isn't self-evident.
Now that Phones4U has finally pushed the button, expect some of the network
operators who have trialled Fastchat, like Orange, to follow suit.
µ
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=11331

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