Sprint PCS Sees "Push to Talk" for Work, Family

Wireless

After Wi-Fi the second most popular topic for carriers to discuss is “push to talk” (PTT). Nextel is the leader in this space with it’s DirectConnect feature. PTT is credited as one of the main reasons that Nextel has been able to draw business users and maintain a relatively high ARPU of $70 per month. It remains to be be seen if other carriers can achieve similar success with PTT. Today at CTIA SprintPCS continued to feed the PTT hype machine with its view that their soon to launch PTT service will appeal to both businesses and families. To us that statement actually reads as a bit of a warning. They seem to be saying, don’t expect us to take on Nextel with our PTT feature, our service will have more of a consumer spin. Sounds like they are realizing that PTT is hard to do and that a bolt-on solution can’t replicate DirectConnect exactly. Hmm, I think we recently read a similar warning elsewhere.