Subject: [NEXTEL-1] The Push-To-Talk Push

From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 19 Aug 2003 01:03:48 -0400

Ten O'Clock Tech
The Push-To-Talk Push
Arik Hesseldahl, 08.18.03, 10:14 AM ET

NEW YORK - In compiling a list of the weirdest and least-remembered of the
technology fads of the 1970s, the CB radio would have to be near the top.

Well before the public discourse among arbiters of what's cool on the fashion
merits of the so-called trucker hat, motorists around the U.S. experienced a brief
but intense fascination with truckers and trucker culture.

 Motorola's V60p wireless phone.

In the mid-1970s this mini-mania was kicked off in part by a TV advertising
campaign pushing a brand of bread and centering on a fictitious trucker named C.W.
McCall. The campaign culminated in the release of a few records, many composed by
Chip Davis, who later gained fame as the founder of the instrumental group
Mannheim Steamroller.

The most successful of the trucker tunes was "Convoy," released in 1976. It opens
with a few lines of CB lingo: "Ah, breaker one-nine, this here's the Rubber Duck.
You gotta copy on me, Pig Pen, c'mon? ... Yeah, that's a big 10-4 there, Pig Pen."

In those days, the must-have gadget of the trucker craze was the CB radio, the
method by which truckers kept in touch and warned each other of lurking "Smokies,"
or police officers, setting speed traps. In the years before the popularization of
mobile phones, some motorists rationalized that a CB radio would be good to have
in the car for emergencies. They bought CB radio sets in droves, learned a spatter
of the lingo and imitated The Dukes of Hazard from Friday-night TV, while their
kids learned it from the CB Bears cartoon on Saturday morning. By the mid-1980s,
the CB-trucker craze had faded like disco into an obscure cultural curiosity. And
unlike disco, it has, thankfully, not yet seen a nostalgic revival.

If that takes you back just a bit, then perhaps you're ready for "push-to-talk,"
which appears to be the craze of the moment among wireless service providers eager
to attract business users and increase the amount of airtime they use each month.

For years push-to talk has been a function available from Nextel (nasdaq: NXTL -
news - people ), the wireless-service provider best known for catering to
businesses where instant communication is useful. Nextel's phones include a
feature it calls Direct Connect, which lets users push a button, like the CB
radios of the '70s, and talk instantly walkie-talkie style with selected users who
have similar phones.

Nextel phones, which consist mostly of a line of phones produced by Motorola
(nyse: MOT - news - people ) under the iDen brand, are the phones of choice for
messengers in New York City, construction workers, factory managers and others who
are in constant communication with a select group of other people equipped with
similar phones. And until last week, Nextel was the only wireless service provider
in the U.S. offering the service.

That changed last week when Verizon Wireless, a joint venture of telecom giant
Verizon Communications (nyse: VZ - news - people ) and Vodafone (nyse: VOD - news
- people ), announced the availability of the first phones with a push-to-talk
capability similar to that offered by Nextel.

The first phones to use the feature on the Verizon Wireless network are, not
surprisingly, made by Motorola. It is the V60p, and it is modeled on one of
Motorola's most popular current models, the V60, a clamshell-style phone
reminiscent of its once-ubiquitous StarTac model phone from the mid-1990s.

Motorola seems intent on using the push-to-talk capability it has designed for
many of its phones as a standard mobile-phone feature. The network operated by
Verizon Wireless uses a technology called CDMA, or code division multiple access,
and it is the dominant type of wireless phone network in the U.S. But the dominant
type of wireless phone network in the world is known as GSM/GPRS. GSM stands for
global system for mobile communications, and GPRS stands for general packet radio
system. Motorola is already doing push-to-talk trials using GSM/GPRS phones in
Jordan.

This will certainly come as an irritant to Nextel, which for years has
distinguished itself in a crowded field of wireless carriers with its Direct
Connect service. But Motorola is not the only one pushing the technology in its
phones. Finland's Nokia (nyse: NOK - news - people ) earlier this year teamed up
with Sweden's Ericsson (nasdaq: ERICY - news - people ) and Germany's Siemens
(nyse: SI) to develop its own push-to-talk capability for GSM/GPRS phones. And
South Korea's Samsung is said to have a CDMA phone with push-to-talk on deck for
the near future.

If it becomes as popular as Motorola and Verizon seem to hope it will, we have to
wonder if push-to-talk, once in wider use, will spur the invention of its own
CB-like argot. While business users are the nominal target, certainly younger
wireless users will--if they can afford it--take to it in the same way they have
with text messaging and phones with integrated cameras.

Perhaps all that's required for a nostalgic revival of the CB-trucker mania is a
technology platform that makes it cool and marginally relevant. Could there yet be
unrevealed levels of irony among Brooklyn's bohemians in the phrase "What's your
20?," which in English means "Where are you?" Will Brooklyn's Williamsburg
neighborhood reverberate with the long-forgotten sign-off of the CB-era,"That's a
big 10-4, good buddy"? Probably not. But in the wireless world, stranger things
have happened

http://www.forbes.com/2003/08/18/cx_ah_0818tentech.html?partner=yahoo&referrer=

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