SIP Center at the Push to Talk World Summit in London
IIR Telecoms and Technology
www.iir-telecoms.com
 
 

Reviewed by Chris Haddock, Ubiquity Software Corporation.

The SIP Center at a Push to Talk conference?

As Push to Talk is such a significant driver in the mobile area for the adoption of SIP based products, The SIP Center attended this IIR event in London (29th March - 31st March, 2004.)

This article focuses on what The SIP Center learned about the status on Push to Talk, as an indicator of how far SIP has progressed within the mobile market. The news is good news for SIP and for the Mobile Network Operators it seems.

The SIP Center is looking to do more of these types of event reviews in business areas that may have a significant impact upon the adoption of SIP, so any feedback would be welcome.

The conference

This was a very positive and upbeat conference on Push to Talk with an excellent group of speakers from Mobile Network Operators, Analysts and the Vendors discussing openly the challenges and directions of the industry on Push to Talk.

From The SIP Centre's perspective, the emphasis on SIP as the signalling protocol of choice and standardisation for Push to Talk clearly supports The SIP Centre's viewpoint that SIP is now a mature enough protocol for the mobile industry to work with.

All the speakers supported the drive towards standardisation and the adoption of the OMA standard. The delivery of PTT phase 1 and PTT phase 2 in the interim was raised by some of the vendors as a clear stepping stone that allowed interoperability and a clear migration to the OMA position.

The general view from the speakers and attendees seemed to be very positive around Push to Talk as a service - the debate was more around the timing and market focus/size. The technical and commercial challenges raised were there to be addressed seemed to be the view of most speakers and there was a general view that there were no show stoppers.

Some of the highlights included the Mobile Network Operators discussing the market focus. This seemed to be business centric in the initial phases moving towards the consumer market as the range of terminal devices and network interoperability challenges were addressed in a standard based way.

T-Mobile for example had carried out a market study where 50% showed interest in a Push to Talk service before and after using a trial service - positive results for a service launch. T-Mobile stated that they are evaluating their commercial introduction options. Also a friendly user trial is planned with a few hundred users Q204. This will be a packet based solution they stated.

T-Mobile was asked if the strategic decision to move ahead with Push to Talk had been made? The response was yes it had, it was just now a case of timing and focus discussions.

T-Mobile was also asked about the significance of the IP Multi-Media Subsystem (IMS) of 3GPP in their plans? The response was that this was a significant part of future proofing the solution and that the implementation would need to move to full IMS in a 1 to 2 year horizon.

Editor's note: Emphasis on IMS is significant as the signalling basis is of course SIP as a protocol to manage all the session based activity!

PA Consulting gave their perspective on Push to Talk at the conference and one of their interesting statements was that "One of the things about PTT is that once one person decides they want it then they want others to have it and once you've used PTT you're hooked."

Nextel, the first company to launch Push to Talk with DirectConnect gave a perspective of how their business focus for Push to Talk had produced significant differentiation for them.  They stated that 90% of subscribers use the service for business use primarily (these are high value customers.)

Nextel also said that their US nationwide launch had resulted in an overwhelming number of subscriptions and that they had had to pull back! Nextel also stated that their intention is to go world-wide with Qualcomm and the Qchat product.

Nextel gave some perspective on how PTT could evolve:

• Push to X (adding other things such as video or images or document...)
• Push to View
• Vertical markets - Travelling Direct Connect
• Presence/Availability features (already have "chirp" back though!)
• Youth market drive with Boost (said 50% use PTT on this group.) "All you can eat" on pre-paid at $1.50 per day as a tariff.

Editor's note: All these application related variants tend of course to lend themselves to the use of SIP as a protocol to manage all the session based activity!

The Ovum presentation asked the question "can PTT cross the Atlantic"

They said the assumption that PTT should be a winner here because Americans like it was not sufficient. They raised some of the issues as follows:

• Europeans have been using an alternative - SMS
• Europe is high penetration, high pre-paid, low ARPU, skewed towards consumer market
• The telephone and voice culture is different - Europeans talk less.
• Europeans take exception to loud voices or noise.
• Walkie-Talkie penetration is high in North America to start with
• US offerings are based on "all you can eat" approaches - culturally accepted - fits well with tariff approach of big bucket ($1.50 a day approach.)
• Verizon, Sprint and Nextel offer unlimited PTT with certain tariffs. Bundling like this tends to hide cannibalisation within the overall deal. Also reduces billing issues and costs associated with this. Direct revenue from subscription services and indirect from loyalty associated with contract.
• Business orientated, price driven proposition to the customers.
• Ovum stated that PTT is not the next SMS. It is though by MNO standards cheap and low risk as a service introduction. It does offer some opportunity for differentiated voice services and deserves support from Ovum as an analyst for that alone.

Fastlink of Jordan presented their service position. They see PTT as an opportunity to maximise on the investment made in GPRS. Capacity utilization of the GPRS is only currently in the 10-25% range for Fastlink.

Fastlink stated that PTT is an instant voice messaging service, building on the success of text messaging witnessed in most world markets - "Say It" instead of "Type It"

Fastlink has a Primary target sector as the business sector, with Consumer as a secondary target.

Fastlink saw the success factors as:

• Positioning : Premium Value Added Services on top of GSM
• Focus on corporate
• Gradual and cautious tapping into family and youth sectors
• Pricing: market value of service not technology
• Pricing: flat fee approach, higher subscription for larger groups, avoid voice impact
• Need standardization of handsets - wide range?
• Billing - need integrated approach to current systems
• Easy to use one-touch approach
• Elisa (Radiolinja) in their presentation said that they'd carried out a trial service last year based on users of age 25 ish. Professional Young Adults.

Conclusions that Elisa had reached from the trial?

• Wait for low and mid end devices
• Client software install needs to be simple
• User i/face and voice quality need to be better
• Interoperability across networks is essential

Elisa's view on how to trigger usage?

• By offering different pricing options
• By offering PTT as part of existing package
• By hiding GPRS pricing
• By Operator menu
• Elisa said that there could possibly be a service launch before the end of this year.

IMS Research gave a forecast and revenue projection for PTT. The figures are not re-produced here. Instead only the summary slide information is provided.

• Strong annual growth rate forecast to peak in 2007
• Growth forecast to continue beyond period examined
• W-wide penetration to exceed 10% by 2008
• Service revenues to exceed $50bn in 2008
• Monthly subscription and per message to be main two billing methods
• Casual usage to account for one third of total revenues by 2008