Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Push to talk

From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 13 Oct 2003 10:04:06 -0400

Push to talk

By Edward C. Baig, USA TODAY

Charley and Christina Longdon credit their aunt and uncle — and "push-to-talk"
walkie-talkie type cell phone service — with saving their lives.

It was Sunday afternoon, May 4, and a tornado was in the area of their home in
Kansas City, Kan. The Longdons retreated with their two boys to the relative
safety of the basement. Charley set out to get the weather radio in his trunk.

On the other side of town, Paul and Beatrice Standridge were glued to the news on
TV. "I saw on the radar that the tornado was headed right for (Charley and
Christina's) neighborhood," Paul says. He grabbed his Nextel phone — the only
available line of communication — and beeped his nephew instantaneously. "I said,
'Stay in your basement, and don't even look outside.' "

   What's the buzz?

How is push-to-talk different from cell calls? First, of course, you must have a
PTT phone (currently from Motorola or RIM Blackberry) and subscribe to a plan on
either Nextel or Verizon. Then...

Making the call

A Nextel Direct Connect number is different from a regular number; Verizon callers
have the same number for PTT and phone, and just press a different button for PTT.
On Verizon, a "presence" icon indicates if a person in your phone book is
available before you make the PTT call.

Connecting

Think of PTT as a long-distance walkie-talkie. With PTT, you can communicate only
with another subscriber on the same network. No dial tone, no busy signal. If a
person can't take the call, the caller can send an "alert" to talk later.

Talking

On a PTT call you hold the button to talk and release it to listen; calls are
meant to be quick and casual. Verizon customers can "broadcast" messages to a
group of 10 or fewer anywhere in the coverage area; Nextel subscribers can
broadcast up to 25 people in the local calling area.

Paying

PTT minutes are separate from cell-plan minutes. Nextel plans with unlimited
minutes start at $50 a month. Verizon's PTT service adds about $20 to the typical
monthly bill.

Staying put was great advice. After the storm passed, Christina recalls, they
found that "the roof just came completely off and probably landed 20 to 30 miles
from here."

Until emergency assistance arrived, the Longdons and Standridges stayed in touch
via push-to-talk. "It really did save our lives," Christina says.

Of course, most people won't use walkie-talkie phones under such dire
circumstances; tracking family members across a mall or theme park is more like
it. But safety has always been a key selling point of cell phones, and the
industry is counting on a public taste for the immediacy of push-to-talk (PTT)
technology, pioneered a decade ago by Nextel for business customers (and adopted
enthusiastically by construction and limo companies, among others), to grow.

Broad acceptance is far from certain. But among Nextel, the USA's fifth largest
wireless carrier with 13 million subscribers, and its larger competitors, "the war
has begun," says Jane Zweig of the Shosteck Group, a telecom research firm:

•This summer, Nextel took its Direct Connect system nationwide; it had been
restricted to regional coverage areas. Def Jam Records founder Russell Simmons, a
PTT fan, was in Florida recently when he Direct Connected (people sometimes use
the phrase as a verb) Run-D.M.C.'s Reverend Run in Hawaii. "It was like he was
next door," Simmons says.

Nextel also is reaching out to the masses through sponsorship of sporting events
(NASCAR, NFL football); ads have depicted celebrities such as Rob Lowe, NYPD
Blue's Dennis Franz and Sex and the City's Kristin Davis using the phones in "real
life." Recent commercials are focusing on average people getting things done.

•Verizon, the largest U.S. cellular company, launched its competing service
nationwide in August. As with Nextel, the initial target is the business user, but
"we're finding that the kids love this," says Dick Lynch, Verizon's chief
technical officer.

•Sprint is preparing to launch PTT by year's end, with more of an emphasis on the
consumer market. AT&T and Cingular are likely to follow suit next year.

•A Chicago-area startup called Fastmobile has shown technology that can turn
certain handset phones into transcontinental PTT phones, accompanied by pictures
and text, though the voice doesn't come through as rapidly as with the Nextel
service.

Why on Earth would you push when you can just dial?

Grasping the appeal requires understanding how the technology differs from a
regular cell call. "Push-to-talk is to voice what instant messaging is to e-mail,"
says analyst Adam Guy of the Yankee Group research firm. Nextel's calls,
identified by a distinctive chirp, are more or less instant. (Latency, or the
amount of time it takes for a spoken sentence to reach its destination, has been
more of an issue on Verizon's nascent offering.) There is no need to wait for a
dial tone, endure busy signals or navigate voice mail.

PTT conversations are meant to be quick and casual. According to Nextel, the
average Direct Connect call lasts about 30 seconds, vs. two minutes for a regular
cell call. Subscriber Jennifer Lapp of Haymarket, Va., exchanges regular status
updates with her husband. It's "really helpful for the short 'How's traffic?' or
'Did you pick up milk?' or 'Did you leave work yet?' type of calls," she says.

Overall, Nextel says customers make about 190 million Direct Connect calls daily,
twice as many as the number of cell calls made on its network. The calls don't eat
away at the regular cell phone bucket of minutes, though PTT isn't cheap; monthly
plans with unlimited Direct Connect start at $50. Push-to-talk adds about $20 to
the typical monthly Verizon bill.

And there seems to be room for growth: Nearly one-fourth of more than 2,000
wireless users, including a disproportionate number of college students and young
professionals, indicated in a survey conducted by the Yankee Group, a market
research firm, that they were interested in adding walkie-talkie capabilities to
their cell phones.

But don't count on a PTT love fest, even after every major carrier shoves its way
in. "It depends on a number of things," Zweig says. Is coverage decent? What's the
price of the service? Are the phones easy to use? Will latency be a problem? How
difficult is it to leave a message? Also:

•The mechanics. Consumers remaining on the sidelines decry the clumsy nature in
which communications take place. An ordinary phone call lets two people chitchat
at the same time. With PTT, you can't hear the other party until you finish
talking and release the button. It leads to choppy and unnatural conversations,
critics say. "I don't think it's for everybody," Verizon's Lynch concedes.

•The etiquette. The mere concept of PTT may be enough to scare bystanders who
already loathe hearing one side of all-too public cell conversations while riding
the bus or in the supermarket. "I call them 'hell phones,' " says Letitia
Baldrige, the Washington-based doyenne of civility.

The proper PTT etiquette in public may be to mute the speakerphone and hold the
phone to your ear, or to use a headset. But how many people care about manners
when they're on a cell call? If PTT takes off, brace yourself for an assault of
chirps, beeps and mindless chatter.

•The incompatibilities. On a regular mobile phone, folks can call virtually
everybody. Nextel and Verizon's respective customers, on the other hand, can only
engage in push-to-talk communications with subscribers on their own network. And
Nextel currently has no intention of opening up its closely guarded system.

"Interoperability is going to be important," says Kris Rinne of Cingular. Telecom
execs need only draw on the experience of text messaging, which didn't take off in
the USA until a person on one cellular network could share messages with a
customer on rival networks. To help make that happen with PTT, handset makers
Siemens, Ericsson, Motorola and Nokia announced completion of a joint industry
standard.

All that said, walkie-talkie phones already have their loyalists, many of whom
began using PTT at work only to expand its use after hours. Keith Albertie, a
wholesale manager at a family-owned oil company near Detroit, is one of them. "If
my father is away in Florida or California, he is still one click away from a
decision that needs to be made right away," he says.

A rapid response is particularly critical during emergencies. On 9/11, heavy
congestion prevented throngs of people from completing mobile calls on other
networks. Nextel says Direct Connect worked just fine.

"I was able to keep in contact with literally hundreds of people," says the Rev.
Robert Romano, deputy chaplain for the New York City Police Department.

He sings PTT's praises because of the way "it causes people to rethink their
communication. When you get on the phone sometimes, people like to talk and talk
and talk. This cuts you down to what you need to do."

Indeed, when he's not praying to a higher authority, Romano says, "Nextel is my
default communication."

http://www.usatoday.com/life/2003-10-12-push-to-talk_x.htm

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