Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Kodiak Offers New Perspective on PTT

From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 10 Nov 2003 14:39:42 -0500

Kodiak Offers New Perspective on PTT
BY SUE MAREK
NOVEMBER 10, 2003

The push-to-talk arena just became a bit more crowded and a lot more
competitive thanks to the debut of Kodiak Networks, a technology vendor
with
some high-profile backers and an innovative take on the instant-chat
phenomenon that Nextel Communications Inc. perfected and so many
wireless
operators are striving to attain.

The company, which has been in stealth mode for two years, has about 80
employees, offices in three cities -- San Ramon, Calif.; Plano, Texas;
and
Bangalore, India -- and is headed by Craig Farrill, the former chief
technology
officer of Vodafone AirTouch. Farrill is credited with helping to launch
the first
major commercial CDMA service in the United States. The company has
$10.5
million in funding from Kleiner Perkins, Redpoint Ventures and inOvate
Communications Group.

Farrill says a major U.S. carrier will deploy the firm's technology and
the
company's CDMA push-to-talk solution already is shipping, as are
handsets.
Kyocera is the first handset vendor to commit to Kodiak's solution and
Farrill says
the handset maker has commercial devices available today.

What makes Kodiak's solution different from the rest of the pack of
vendors,
according to Farrill, is its Real-Time Exchange System, which is an
all-IP based
packet-switched solution that uses the existing voice channel. "This
works
everywhere because of the fundamental voice networks," Farrill says. "It
can
speak the language of 2G networks and the language of 3G networks."

Because it uses the voice channel, Farrill says that latency is minimal.
The RTX
system has an intra-call latency of 150 milliseconds and its call setup
(which is
typically the most time-consuming part of the interchange) occurs in two
to three
seconds.

And when it comes to connecting with others, Farrill says that as long
as the
person initiating the PTT call is on a carrier using the RTX system and
using a
compatible handset, they can connect with any other wireless or even
wireline
user, regardless of who their carrier is or what handset they are using.
This
scenario also works for group calling as long as the initiator is using
a carrier with
Kodiak's system and a Kodiak-compatible handset. This way, Farrill says,
carriers
and subscribers can take advantage of existing investment in handsets.

Kodiak's solution is getting accolades from analysts. "If they can do
what they say
they can do, they have a winner," says Andy Seybold with Outlook for
Mobility.

Seybold says he hasn't actually seen a demo of the technology; however,
one
potential problem with using the voice channel instead of voice over IP,
he warns,
is some carriers, particularly GSM operators, may not have the necessary
capacity
in their voice networks to support this technology.

Still, Farrill says the RTX system uses less capacity than voice over
IP. According
to Farrill, the radio link is the limiting factor in voice networks but
the RTX system
efficiently uses the radio link.

http://www.wirelessweek.com/index.asp?layout=newsat2direct&starting=2&pubdate=11/10/03

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