Push-to-Talk over Cellular technology is wobbling on three legs: one belonging to Nokia Corp.; the second to four other heavyweights; and the third to the Open Mobile Alliance- and all three legs are hopping in different directions.
“This means there will be a long time when there will be multiple standards,” lamented Johan Bergendahl, vice president of marketing at L.M. Ericsson.
Trouble began to simmer in public last week in the PoC house when Nokia turned to a different path from other major vendors and fellow members of the Open Mobile Alliance on how to implement the pre-standard protocol.
The other PTT vendors, Siemens AG, Motorola Inc., Ericsson and Sony Ericsson, conducted what they described as the first joint Push-to-Talk over Cellular interoperability test.
Both sides have proprietary standards, noted Mark Cataldo, chair of the OMA technical plenary, dissociating his alliance from both the products of Nokia and those of the other four players.
“The reason they refer to OMA is that it is the only way they can get acceptance,” said Gaby Lenhart, chairman of the OMA PTT working group. She explained that both sets of products are 2.5G compliant, but OMA only focuses on third-generation services.
The first crack appeared at the 3GSM Congress in Cannes in February, according to Bergendahl.
“A number of operators came to Cannes confused about the standards,” he explained. “We sat down with a number of operators who were disappointed and said we were acting on what we agreed on last August.”
All the players, including Nokia, had agreed to work together toward a common set of PoC specifications to leverage those of the Third Generation Partnership Project, OMA and the Internet Engineering Task Force.
So the divergent announcements last week were out of step with industry expectations.
“The tests are designed to help provide network operators with easy integration, interoperability and a competitive environment in which to deploy commercial PoC service,” said Siemens, Motorola, Sony Ericsson and Ericsson.
The discord centers at the pre-standards level as the full standard likely will not be completed until the end of the year.
This may pose a challenge among consumers for ease of use and common experience. The first technical standard specification for PoC was submitted to the OMA in August. Some vendors say they are pushing a final version of the PoC standard. The process follows three phases, which implies a second phase has to be scaled before the final one.
“We didn’t join the test because we have a slightly different pre-standard implementation for early-market entry,” remarked Laurie Armstrong, spokeswoman for Nokia. “We felt that the implementation of their products didn’t offer operators a credible way forward so we implemented a different approach.”
Motorola echoed OMA’s position that the vendors will go ahead with their products as interim measures to supply GPRS PoC networks for its carriers before UMTS networks become ready, according to Mike Koenig, vice president of instant communications at Motorola.
“It is packet-based and uses GPRS PoC over packet data networks,” he said. Koenig denies that it is proprietary, explaining that it can utilize UMTS as well as CDMA networks.
But Nokia’s products will not interoperate with either Motorola’s or Ericsson’s gear. The four other vendors describe their products as interoperable.
However, Armstrong said Nokia expects to comply with the specifications when they are agreed upon. But there is no guarantee that if the pre-standard implementation generates discord, it will not continue when the final specifications are discussed.
“We are confident that there will be Push-to-Talk over Cellular specifications that we’ll agree on, implement and adhere to, therefore providing interoperability across multiple vendors,” said Armstrong.
Bergendahl describes the disagreements as “a normal process with new technologies,” adding he hopes all the parties will modify their products and “do interoperability” in due course.
On whether Nokia’s pre-standard product will interoperate with those of the other vendors, Armstrong said work was in progress and when the standards are reached, the company expects all the systems will work together.
Nokia said its products will be introduced in GSM networks “already in the second quarter of 2004 as a commercial service using pre-standard protocols.”
It said more than 30 operators are undertaking trials, with three public commercial contracts. The other players also say they are conducting trials with their carrier customers around the world.
Nokia said its terminal, the Nokia 5140, will be commercially available during the second quarter. It plans to introduce a full range of push-to-talk capable phones, including Symbian OS-based smart phones, adding that from 2005 PTT will be available in GPRS/WCDMA phones.
