Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Instant communication on the move

From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 27 Oct 2003 10:38:52 -0500

10/27/03

By Richard Handford

Many of us grew up using walkie-talkies - or at least watched the cops on
television who did. And, like those police shows, walkie-talkies are making a
comeback. This time, however, they are being put forward as the vanguard of IP
technology in the cellular phone industry.

Although the principle remains the same, the walkie-talkie is now known as
"push-to-talk", named for the handset button that directly connects the user to
other members of a group. In addition to traditional walkie-talkie applications,
such as taxis or building sites, operators are also pursuing the "grey-collar"
market. They want to persuade groups who travel a lot but need to stay in touch,
such as sales teams or engineers, of the benefits of this modified technology. For
instance, members of an IT department spread around various sites can set up
conference calls more easily than with a conventional cellular service.
Tal Kuttner, assistant vice-president of marketing and business development in the
instant communication division of Comverse, a supplier of software and systems to
mobile operators, believes such applications will boost productivity: "It's for
team management and collaboration. Because it's instant you don't need 'Hello' and
'How are you?'. Users can get straight to the point. It gives a manager more
flexibility to co-ordinate his/her team."

However, some think this kind of directness may not play so well everywhere in the
world. "Is it intrusive? I think that's the bigger question. It will be
interesting to see how it goes down in Europe," comments Jane Zweig, CEO of The
Shosteck Group, a US mobile communications consultancy.

But the mobile industry is interested in developing push-to-talk even further, so
that it becomes the mobile equivalent of web-based instant messaging (news - web
sites) (IM). Central to the IM concept is seeing if others in a group are online.
Mobile phones can extend this concept further so users can also check the location
of their colleagues. The cellular industry terms this development "presence-based"
services.
"'Presence is an enabler that tells you whether a mobile phone is turned on or
not," explains Helene Birknert, manager for Ericsson (news - web sites)'s mobile
media marketing program. "It can also show if someone is in a meeting or at home.
It's a way to communicate how a user can be reached."
Furthermore, a mobile instant messaging system could be linked to existing
web-based systems. Voice and data messages could then be routed easily between a
mobile phone or PC. Thus, users will not need to replace existing cellular
handsets.  Instead, they will be able to download the appropriate software.
Applications like push-to-talk have never been launched on cellular networks
before because the economics were unattractive.

However, IP technology now makes them more appealing.
With IP technology, customers use only the network capacity they need rather than
having to reserve frequencies for a set period of time as would be necessary with
older circuit-switched technology, explains Bryan Curley, director of services
with the GSM Association, a trade association that represents a number of leading
cellular operators. "It's about efficiency," he says. "Holding open a circuit
would be inherently inefficient. You could have five or six people in a
push-to-talk session who will be silent a lot of the time. But the circuits would
still not be available for the operator to offer to other users. However, an IP
system can use the same connection for other voice and data at the same time."

Users will be hoping that cellular operators will be prepared to pass on the
benefits of these cost efficiencies. They will find out soon enough if savings are
on offer as there is a growing momentum behind the launch of IP-based mobile
services. The US is currently ahead of other regions in offering commercial
services. Mobile radio operator Nextel has been offering services like
push-to-talk for some time and now many of its rivals plan to follow suit. Leading
cellular operator Verizon Wireless (news - web sites) launched commercially in
August, and other companies, such as Sprint PCS, are likely to follow later this
year.

Latin America and Asia - although behind the US - are in trial mode and moving
towards commercial launches, say vendors.  Meanwhile, European operators have been
slower to wake up to the possibilities of push-to-talk, although France Telecom's
Orange and Finnish operator Radiolinja have launched trials. Both use a system
supplied by a company called Fastmobile that operates its own push-to-talk service
in the UK, called Fastchat. In the US, however, the desire of operators to beat
their rivals has overtaken efforts to create a universal standard, with users
being offered services based on proprietary technology. This means they will only
be able to communicate with others on the same network or using a handset from the
same vendor, a dent in the attractiveness of the service. "Interoperability is an
issue," says Jane Zweig of The Shosteck Group. She points to how the take-up of
SMS was hindered by the initial absence of this basic capability.

However, the industry argues the lack of standards is only a short-term glitch.
"Vendors and operators know they eventually need to offer interoperability. It
will not be too difficult to adopt standards. The industry's solutions are close
to standards and we are working toward them," responds Comverse's Tal Kuttner.

The cellular industry is moving towards a standard called IP Multimedia Subsystems
(IMS). But it is unclear whether the version of IMS that emerges from the GSM
community, the mobile standard used in Europe, will be interoperable with that
supported by the backers of CDMA (news - web sites), the dominant standard in the
US.

A specification based on IMS evolving out of the GSM standard was put forward by
leading vendors in September and will be used in handsets coming available in the
first half of next year at the earliest. This standard is called push-to-talk over
cellular, or PoC.

IMS - and even current proprietary systems - are based around the Sip, or session
initiation protocol, a technology widely used in fixed networks. It enables
multimedia traffic made up of voice, data or video to be mixed up together over an
IP network and then reassembled at its destination.

Outside the enterprise (news - web sites) market, a major application for IP-based
mobile services is expected to be multi-player gaming. The industry hopes to see
users racing each other in tiny cars on their phone screens, or cold-heartedly
outbidding one another at poker, for example. In addition, the technology's
efficiency will allow them to speak with one another at the same time.  "They will
be shouting 'Watch out for this corner' or 'What's in front of you?' while the
race is on," explains Ericsson's Helene Birknet. It's a bit like playing cops and
robbers.

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=1106&u=/ft/20031027/bs_ft/1066565392089&printer=1

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