Countering a similar offering by rival wireless provider Tata Teleservices, Indian wireless carrier Hutchison Essar launched Fastmobile Inc.’s push2talk service, which combines walkie-talkie services with instant messaging, short message service, multimedia messaging service and voice messaging.
The carrier said the service would be available to more than 150,000 Hutch and Orange users across India using GPRS handsets powered by the Symbian operating platform, including Nokia Corp.’s 3650, 3600, 6600, 7650 and Ngage devices, along with Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications L.P.’s P800 and P900 handsets.
Earlier this week, Tata became the first carrier to launch Qualcomm Inc.’s BREWChat service, which operates on the BREW platform.
In other push-to-talk news, Nokia Corp. said China’s Guangdong Mobile Communications Corp. will trial push-to-talk services based on Nokia’s Push-to-talk over Cellular technology. Following initial service trials, Guangdong MCC will begin market trials, where its lead customers will trial the services with Nokia terminals over Nokia infrastructure.
“We are pleased to partner with Guangdong MCC, and their confidence in our service has given us the momentum to introduce standards-compatible push-to-talk technology in China,” said Brian Ng, vice president of networks for Nokia China.
The carrier has more than 30 million mobile subscribers in southern China.
The announcement is interesting considering Nokia recently decided to take a different route with the PoC standard than rivals Motorola, L.M. Ericsson, Siemens AG and Nortel Networks Ltd., which some experts believe may create interoperability obstacles with PoC. Nokia said it has more than 30 operator trials of its PoC technology ongoing, and five commercial contracts.
Motorola earlier this week announced its PoC solution, which it called industry’s first cross-protocol PoC technology.
