Subject: [NEXTEL-1] PTT's New Flavor: Instant Group Calling Company unleashes new concept in PTT capabilities.

From: [email-masked]
Date: Sun, 02 May 2004 05:56:24 -0400

PTT's New Flavor: Instant Group Calling Company unleashes new concept in
PTT capabilities.

BY BRAD SMITH
MAY 1, 2004
WIRELESS WEEK

Except for Nextel Communications' Direct Connect service, push-to-talk
services
on wireless networks are still in their infancy. As with the early
stages of many
technologies and their various implementations, PTT must go through a
series of
interoperability challenges, whether they involve networks or different
handsets.

Enter Polycom, a leading video and voice conferencing company, which
says it
has found the answer to make PTT not only interoperable but a richer
experience. Under the name MobileMeeting, the Pleasanton, Calif.,
company has
started offering what it calls "instant group calling" for wireless
networks.

"We avoid talking about conferencing because people think of it as an
enterprise
application," says Chris Hotz, Polycom's wireless general manager. He
says
MobileMeeting has broader appeal, say for teenagers, families or soccer
moms
and dads who want to talk to a group instantly.

"You can use the cell phone to instantly connect to a number of people,"
Hotz
says, "and it's as easy as a point-to-point phone call. It's full duplex
[which
means two people can talk at the same time], has high-quality sound and
you
can have 300-person conference calls."

MobileMeeting was derived from Polycom's purchase of Voyant Technologies

earlier this year and its experience in voice networking and
collaboration.
Polycom has tested MobileMeeting with several wireless carriers.

The trials, Hotz says, showed that people use MobileMeeting differently
than the
typical conference call. Where the average conference call may last as
long as
one hour and involve a half-dozen people, the MobileMeeting calls were
only 5 to
15 minutes long and involved smaller groups.

Bill Ernstrom, general manager of Polycom's Voyant division, says the
trials
showed how MobileMeeting was used by teenagers making group calls,
college
students setting up weekend plans, mobile executives conducting
meetings,
community groups setting up phone trees and even emergency response
teams
facilitating communication.

MobileMeeting's advantage over typical PTT solutions is that no special
handset
is required. It can be used with an analog phone or digital phones that
support
J2ME, Qualcomm's BREW, the RIM BlackBerry or Symbian. A landline phone
or
even a VoIP handset can be used.

"Our application roadmap is based on our customer needs," Hotz says.

Polycom is marketing MobileMeeting as a stand-alone product or as a
complement to PTT. The company and PTT provider Sonim Technologies have
been demonstrating how the two work together. The demo shows the setup
of a
PTT call using Sonim's Push-to-talk over Cellular (PoC) technology and
then
migrating the call to full-duplex using MobileMeeting.

"This is the first in a series of enterprise and consumer applications
for the PoC
platform, leveraging the extendibility and flexibility of the PoC
specification,"
according to Wade Vesey, chief marketing officer for Sonim. "Conference
calls
are a daily routine for business users, and this application removes the
hassle of
scheduling and distributing call-in information, instead enabling the
user to
quickly browse who is available and initiate conference calls on the
fly."

Because of interoperability issues related to handsets, Sonim's PTT
solution
works only on specific devices. But with Polycom's product, any handset
can be
used, as well as offering full-duplex.

What's more, Hotz says, carriers can launch MobileMeeting almost
immediately
through a hosted solution. It can be brought into the network later.

Analyst Phil Marshall of the Yankee Group says instant group calling
services
such as MobileMeeting offers carriers another opportunity to
differentiate
themselves with new services and improve customer loyalty. Polycom's
hosted
solution is a low-cost, low-risk way of trying it out, he says.

http://www.wirelessweek.com/article/CA414482?spacedesc=Departments&stt=000

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