Subject: [NEXTEL-1] PTT Services Proliferate Overseas

From: Marcelrf <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 24 Mar 2004 10:32:41 -0500

PTT Services Proliferate Overseas
European, Asian operators move ahead with push-to-talk deployments, but network interoperability remains nonexistent.

BY SUE MAREK
MARCH 22, 2004
WIRELESS WEEK

In the past year, much ado has been made of new competitive push-to-talk
offerings introduced in the United States, all with the intent of mimicking Nextel Communications' popular and profitable Direct Connect service. Perhaps the greatest potential for PTT exists in the overseas markets - Asia and Europe -where PTT has been nonexistent until recently. But as the overseas PTT market heats up, so do the questions about the ultimate potential of PTT and how critical interoperability is to the overall growth and demand for the service.
Color it Orange The largest operator outside the United States to reveal its PTT plans is Orange, which will roll out its Talk Now service in the United Kingdom and France in the coming months, expanding to 10 countries by year's end.  The service is being tested with business users in the first quarter with commercial rollout in the second quarter. The first consumer offering is expected by year-end. The company hopes to attract 1 million subscribers to the service in the coming year.
Initially, Talk Now will be available on the Orange Treo 600 handset, but the company says more handsets will become available in the second quarter, including a ruggedized device for field workers and consumer-style handsets.

Orange's announced deployment was a big win for U.S.-based Kodiak Networks, which is the vendor powering the Talk Now service. The San Ramon, Calif., company made its public debut in November after working in stealth mode for two years. Besides Orange, U.S. operator Alltel has announced plans to deploy Kodiak's PTT offering.

Kodiak's solution is different from several other vendors in that it uses the existing voice channel instead of the data channel. Because of this, the company says latency is minimal. In addition, the company's Real-Time Exchange System allows users initiating a PTT call to connect with any other wireless or even wireline user, regardless of their carrier or what handset they are using. This offers some limited interoperability with other networks; however, it is still far from the type of PTT interoperability that most envision, where any subscriber from any network can use PTT to connect to any other subscriber.
More on the way Although Orange is the first European operator to publicly announce its plans, others are expected to follow soon. According to Tapio Heikkila, director of marketing and sales for core networks at Nokia, other European operators have their launch plans in place and he expects all major operators to launch PTT in the second half of the year.

Besides the European operators, Heikkila says Asian carriers also are forging ahead with PTT. Three Asian operators recently announced their intent to deploy Nokia's push-to-talk over cellular, or POC, solution. Thailand's AIS expects to commercially launch in the second quarter and Australia's Optus announced it will deploy POC commercially by mid-year. Australian operator Telstra has said it will deploy POC but has not yet provided a timeframe.
Heikkila says Nokia's POC product is 'pre-standard,' meaning it is compatible with the Open Mobile Alliance's push-to-talk over cellular standard but will have to be upgraded to fully comply with the OMA standard that has been submitted but not ratified. That is expected to happen in the coming months.
Standards work For PTT interoperability to occur between subscribers on different networks, the network equipment must be interoperable as well as the handsets.

Many handset makers have announced alliances with different PTT equipment vendors and some plan to use a PTT solution that is based on the pre-OMA
standard. Nokia, of course, has introduced its first PTT handsets and announced that in the year ahead, it will debut a full range of PTT compatible handsets, including Symbian OS-based smartphones. In 2005 and onward, the company says PTT will become a standard feature in all its GPRS/wideband CDMA phones.
Besides Nokia, other handset makers have embraced the OMA-based client, including Siemens, Samsung and Sony Ericsson.

But this initial OMA-based standard covers only GSM networks. Medman says that CDMA2000 is part of the POC specification and will be released in the second phase of the standard.
Like Nokia, Ericsson has been involved in the OMA standards for POC.

According to Niclas Medman, marketing manager, business unit systems for Ericsson,
none of the existing systems are standards-compliant, but that hasn't stopped
operators from deploying these initial non-standard systems in an effort to be first to market. Ericsson expects to commercially launch its PTT solution in a carrier network in the second quarter.

PTT vendor Sonim Technologies also offers a pre-standardized PTT solution that can be integrated with Ericsson's Instant Talk offering. According to Sonim President and CEO John Burns, the industry should look at the POC standard and interoperability testing as an example of how the industry can work together and come up with a robust service. "This can be an expansive and profitable service for the operator," Burns says.
Although Sonim has not publicly announced any operator equipment deals, the company has received a new chunk of financing. In late February it announced $28 million in Series C financing from Accel Partners, as well as existing investors Apax Partners, 3i Partners and BV Capital.

But Sonim is looking beyond PTT to other applications. It has aligned with voice conferencing firm Polycom to offer group calling solutions that will combine Sonim's PTT solution with Polycom's voice conferencing technology.
According to Burns, nearly all conference calling traffic today is done over landline phones and he believes that this is a big market for wireless operators to tap.
Although initial PTT offerings are just now becoming commercially available overseas, 2004 is shaping up to be a critical time for the technology.  Although network and handset interoperability is possible, it will take some time before standards-compliant equipment is available. PTT is getting its start, but these initial debuts are far from the robust and interoperable service that many envisioned.

http://www.wirelessweek.com/article/CA404848?text=nextel%5C&stt=001

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