What about including Push to Talk in RCS ?

When talking about RCS (Rich Communication Suite) current features are Presence, Instant Messaging, VideoShare (enriched call) and file sharing...With all of them, using a "common use" a lot of applications and services could be offered on top, and Solaiemes is also working in a platform to make really easy for 3rd parties reach their customers using RCS.
But....we still miss the Push To Talk there.
Half duplex VoIP could be a great enabler for user generated content (UGC) to social media, voice alerts, and voice updates from social media and CRM universes.
Being triggered from the enhanced phonebook, Push To Talk is the missing feature to ensure the RCS success and complete the types of media directly reaching the web world from mobiles. PTT deserves a second chance to show its potential, more focused to subscriber <-> solution use cases system rather than subscriber <-> subscriber use case.

Come on !!! GSMA people...for mobility's sake, let's include PTT in the RCS specs !!!

Hi carriers, do you want an innovative new "cash-cow" ?

Yeapp !!! we believe a new cash-cow can help the telco industry to find new consistent revenue stream, take the most from past capex investment and "re-invent" carriers services not being pushed properly in the past, and what is more important, monetize the social media interaction, offering an easy way communicate dual way with web 2.0 concepts. Twitter is a clear example of how web 2.0 concepts need mobility for a proper "always on".
IP services are winning, carriers aim to offer standarized services rather than specific application to be portated from mobile platform to mobile platform....IMS and PTT Servers investments were done....USE THEM.

The fear of mobile 2 way radio (push to talk) cannibalizing voice and sms markets only applies when thinking in person-to-person use cases....but on the other hand why no using PTT for

- User generated content to the web (enterprise or social media) ?
- Quick interaction with IVR for customer care not needing permanent full-duplex connection ?
- Audio based non intrusive advertisment when combining PTT and presence ?
- New user alerts customized in lots of fields ?
- Receiving audio-read of your incoming emails ?
- Standarized audio-push from web to mobile and/or mobile to web?

Even owning high tier smartphones, people can not walk in the street, or travel permanently focused on what is happening on the display....Why not using from low to high tier devices PTT enabled to offer a wide range of amazing mobile use cases for your base of customers ???

Solaiemes platform VOXSERVE is designed to interoperate with whatever OMA PoC Server vendor to deliver a full range of mobile services.
We are eager to partners with Mobile Carriers, MVNO's and service providers feeling the need of keep a role enhancing Mobility, taking the most from past CAPEX investment and offering new capabilities to keep and improve customer loyalty.

Solaiemes is looking for Carriers offering Push To Talk service to partner a mobile Voice 2.0 revolution...contact us...win win and win your customers. Maybe Solaiemes become the farmer of your cash-cows :-)

Voice 2.0 matters!

The Voice is the quickest way of interaction, last years the "multimedia revolution" and internet moved the focus away from voice, but now the current scenario favouring the convergence and mash-up concepts are coming back to take again the voice and take the most of it.
Voice 2.0 are not related only with transport method and signalling (VoIP/SIP) but also the use and the combination with different solutions. You can find interesting definition here.
Voice can take profit from the "building blocks" trend, in order to build up very complex and powerful solutions. Till now...

a) Voice could be carried using legacy PSTN, VoIP, IP streaming, and 2 way Push To Talk (also IP)
b) Voice could be recognized (ASR), voice can be generated from text (TTS) and voice can be transcripted to text
c) Voice could be used for interaction (IVR) and this interaction can be designed easily using VXML & CCXML protocols.

From now on VOICE can be used as additional input/ouput source/destination in ubiquous /convergent solutions, voice mash-ups can be created to merge voice, mobility, web 2.0 creating powerful sinergies. Media task reporting, social media new concepts, personals assistant solutions, emergencies and law enforcement fields will be benefited.

Currently there are companies offering "building blocks" to be combined and interoperated with 3rd party applications easily: SpinVox (voice to text matching), Voxeo (cloud IVR), IfbyPhone, etc).
Solaiemes wants to offer new enablers to use voice combined with Web and Mobililty. Using our VoxServe and LiveServe platforms combined we can create a web based push to talk client to interact with mobiles, working as a dispatcher and also as media repository without installing external apps at pc or mobile. Watch our alfa demo.

We still believe in Push to Talk as a powerful service enabler

Hi, during the MWC we will be showcasing our whole portfolio, and yes, we still are firmly believer in PoC (push over cellular) potential. There are a lot of fields, both, mass market and enterprise/government activities needing a quick audio and/or pic reporting. Those use cases are needing PTT as a easier mechanism to carry voice to server based solutions.
Fortunately, several companies are developing following OMA standards the PTT servers and even devices focused in complex application areas. One of them is Sonim Technologies, with very useful (and affordable) PTT enabled ruggedized devices XP1 and XP3 (and also their OMA PTT Server).




Solaiemes is working with their VoxServe technology to provide a solutions framework to offer as license and/or SaaS a layer to combine the PTT service and the PTT devices to build added value solutions. Mass market and enterprise/government field daily activities can take profit of reporting, recording, real time information sharing PTT can provide. A wide range of use cases for PTT are not replacing circuit switch voice calls (main fear of mobile carriers reluctant to promote PTT). Please, all we must open minds and boost Mobility.

Solaiemes launchs VOXSERVE, the push-to-talk services enabler platform

After months of very intensive work, we are glad to announce our new product line, VOXSERVE. Voxserve (release 1.0) is the platform to easily build up value added services based on push-to-talk technology (working with 2G and 3G devices, from low-mid tier to high tier).
Our platforms enables person-machine push-to-talk interaction delivering compelling experiencies beyond the primitive use cases of PTT (mobile to mobile voice, mobile to groups voice, and PTT dispatcher). Fortunately, the use cases we are enabling are not circuit switch cannibalizing revenues. Some applications but not all :-) include:

• Mobile UserGeneratedContent: media-sharing audio sites, personal audio-diary, audio micro-blogging.
• mobile CRM: one way CRM alerts, easy CRM interactions (question/answer), voice biometrics authentication. (easy integration with IVR and voice biometrics engines).
• Mobile ERP/ECM: audio real time reporting, and task assignment.
• Media: cost effective breaking news distribution method.
  

The VOXSERVE is OMA compliant, and works with OMA Push to Talk Server and device clients. In case of being interoperated with Nokia Siemens Network which matches OMA and Nokia PTT most of Nokia devices and mass market services become feasible.
We welcome PTT independent service providers using OMA servers, Mobile Carriers and MVNO and high intensive CRM enterprise (Banks, Utilities...), ERP SW companies, and media sites to trial our technology as an alternative CRM channel. Please, take a look to the video with demos, feedback desired.

NTT: one of the biggest IMS & PoC deployment so far

Over the last years NTT has deployed more than 30 million of PoC handsets in its advanced 3G FOMA network. The service was launched as "PushTalk" in late 2005. Now, 30 million handsets is a small fraction of the market but a significant number compared to the tiny deployments made so far.

Service relies on NEC IMS core, technical details are not clear, but we can safely bet this is the biggest mobile IMS deployment so far. PoC or PTT are terms not mentioned by NTT, perhaps they are using a proprietary, IMS-based, protocol.

The basic service includes group calls up to 5 participants, for larger groups an additional service must be contracted (PushTalk Plus), aimed at enterprises. Service is billed per push (0,03€ per push) and there is a flat rate (Kake-Hodai) service for 6,45€ per month.
PushTalk Plus service, including group calls up to 20 members, is 12,9€ per month.

And a very interesting detail: Service is activated by default in every handset for every subscriber. I don't know the reason for that, but one very important consequence: you needn't to know in advance if the person you want to call has the service or not: everybody "is in the service". And the person receiving the call will probably answer back. This scheme encourages service spreading from a small number of knowledgeable users to the rest. From my point of view, this is much better than waiting for the subscribers to ask for activation, or trying to communicate with other subscribers only to find that they are not subscribed.

Japan is a very innovative market, we are looking forward to reading some data about service usage, would that be a test of things to come?

Push to Talk. Good news, Instantcom offering PTT offered as ASP

We welcome the initiative of Instantcom launching a push to talk service as SaaS. Carriers did not push forward very powerful services as PTT due to concerns about circuit switch voice cannibalization and a lot of possible services man-machine oir man-to-serveral could not become feasible.
The service is offered with monthly fee plus the amount of data accoring to the data price of mobile/dsl carriers. Even paying twice (service provider and data traffic provider) it turns positive as roaming is enabled, and you can use the service with other carrier customers.
As Solaiemes is launching their new product line based on PoC added value solutions the concern about carrier service availability disappeared :-)
Hope big companies, banks, media companies, will replace carriers pushing services if carriers are not interested.