Subject: [NEXTEL-1] The Feature: Topics: Business: Someone Finally Admits PTT Is Overhyped

From: Marcelrf <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 31 Mar 2004 05:04:54 -0500

TheFeature: Topics: Business: Someone Finally Admits PTT Is Overhyped

Someone Finally Admits PTT Is
Overhyped
By Eric Lin, Tue Mar 30 23:15:00 GMT 2004

At a conference in London about Push To Talk, a T-Mobile exec finally
questioned whether this is a feature subscribers really want. It's
unlikely that carriers will cancel PTT launches, but they could delay
them until they've come up with a good strategy.
The Inquirer was there to see Carsten Otto, a Senior Program Manager at
T-Mobile, ask if they weren't about to repeat the same mistake as when
operators launched WAP as the mobile internet.  The industry is
certainly hyping PTT like they did WAP. The implementations are
certainly as splintered as WAP 1.x. Worst of all latency,
interoperability and hardware all raise concerns about the usability of
PTT, just like WAP.Based on the success of Nextel, the Western world has
been hyping Push To Talk as the next big service. However Otto points
out it's quite possible Nextel could be just as successful without the
walkie talkie service. Nextel has done an excellent job of targeting the
latest business acronym: SMEs (small and medium enterprises). Their high
penetration into this market is what is primarily responsible for their
low churn and high ARPU. What Otto neglects to comment on is whether PTT
is what caused Nextel's thorough penetration into the business market in
the first place.One factor that can't be questioned is the actual
difference in use of technologies across Western cultures. Otto points
out that sales of actual walkie talkies are significantly lower in
Europe than the US. Do carriers believe that by integrating the
functionality into a mobile that it will become desirable? T-Mobile
thinks it's unlikely, but the consensus at the conference was that it
will depend heavily on standards and interoperability, which won't
happen until next year at the earliest.We breathed a collective sigh of
relief at Otto's remarkable realism. After standards are in place and
demand for Push To Talk has been carefully evaluated, carriers could
pull together a plan for a successful launch. Until then we'll enjoy the
relative peace and quiet of a minimum of PTT notification chirps- except
on TV. Nextel has been bombarding us with commercials of people using
PTT during inappropriate situations to get things "done." This is
exactly why I think PTT will fail in consumer implementations- it
invades the users personal space, something which we all take very
seriously. I hope the handset manufacturers and standards bodies take
that issue seriously before they release the spec next year.
=============================================================

purenergy, Wed Mar 31 03:59:49 GMT 2004

The other part that's a real bummer about the whole PTT feature is that
you can only use it on the network that you are a subscriber of.
Somebody on Verizon can't PTT to somebody on Sprint. Let's face it, how
often can you get all of your friends and family on the same network.
It's like herding cats.  It's a cool feature if you have enough people
to talk to on your own network, though.

http://www.thefeature.com/article?articleid=100495&ref=729942

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