Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Push-to-talk in danger of over-hypeing its own pudding

From: Marcelrf <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 30 Mar 2004 12:43:18 -0500

Push-to-talk in danger of over-hypeing its own pudding 

T-Mobile fears another WAP

By Tony Dennis: Tuesday 30 March 2004, 13:06

 IN A REMARKABKLY FRANK speech delivered at the Push-to-Talk World 
Summit in London, T-Mobile's Carsten Otto confessed that there was a 
danger that push-to-talk was turning into "another hype like the 
mobile Internet a few years ago." 
T-Mobile has more incentive than any other network operator to look 
very closely at how it might offer push-to-talk (PTT) facilities 
since it is the only European operator competing directly against 
Nextel in the USA. 

Otto argued quite forcefully that the perception that Nextel is 
earning high revenues and enjoys low churn (customer loss) has 
little to do with PTT and more to do with its business model. 

He claims that with Nextel's strong focus on SMEs and business 
customers, Nextel would be doing just as well without PTT as it is 
with PTT. He also pointed out that dedicated walkie-talkies sales 
reach about 10 million units in the USA every year - something which 
isn't remotely achieved in Europe. 

So will PTT really translate into a European phenomenon as everyone 
predicts, he asks? Carsten Otto took another pot-shot at the widely-
held belief that PTT will turn into a consumer-desired facility. "Do 
I really need PTT for the mountain slopes when I only going skiing 
once a year," he wondered? 

The spooky thing was listening to speakers at the summit argue about 
the delay experienced when receiving a PTT message. Some speakers 
said it could be as much as 8 seconds whereas others say it is sub 1 
second. 

Otto felt it would be more like 2-3 seconds. This sounded exactly 
the previous discussions over the 'true' speed of GPRS which 
mysteriously sunk from 117 Kbit/s to around 20 Kbit/s in real life. 

Another warning note sounded by Otto concerned launching PTT 
compatible handsets before the official Push-to-talk standard was 
finalised -- probably not until Q1 2005. It would, he suggested, 
lead to users being confused over who was capable of receiving a PTT 
message and who wasn't. µ 

L'INQ
www.iir-conferences.com/pushtotalk 

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=15051

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