Upcoming Push-To-Talk Battle?
As Nextel takes steps to become a bigger player in the consumer market, competitors Verizon, Alltel and SprintPCS are setting their sites on push-to-talk services to compete with Nextel’s DirectConnect feature. Push-to-talk has helped Nextel go after small and large businesses which gives them the industry’s highest ARPU. It’s unlcear if competitors can cut into Nextel’s market just by offering push-to-talk or if the competing services will even match Nextel’s offerings. Rather than taking Nextel head-on carriers should look at how to make their push-to-talk different and unique from Nextel’s. One idea would be to offer seamless interconnection between operators so that Verizon customers could push-to-talk with SprintPCS customers.
