China Mobile Ltd. subsidiary Jiangsu Mobile Communications Co. Ltd. picked Texas-based Kodiak Networks to supply push-to-talk technology for deployment in the coastal Jiangsu Province.
Kodiak said it has been in trials with JMCC with a user base of 20,000 customers who will be rolled over into the commercial launch. JMCC intends to target enterprise users with the PTT technology; the company has more than 12 million customers in the province. Kodiak has more than a dozen deployments around the world with carriers including AT&T Mobility and Alltel. Other markets include the Caribbean, Europe and two networks in India. John Vice, president and CEO of Kodiak, said the company also has “a number of other deals right now that we expect to launch in the not-too-distant future.”
Vice said that the Kodiak network will be the first commercial deployment of PTT technology in China. Kodiak’s network provides voice-based PTT, not PTT that requires data network coverage. Although GPRS data coverage extends to the major population centers, Vice said, such coverage outside large cities is fairly thin in China and a voice-based system allows a carrier to offer PTT regardless of whether it has a 2G, 2.5G or 3G network.
According to China Mobile’s latest subscriber figures, the parent company counts nearly 350 million subscribers and is growing at a rate of more than 6 million subscribers per month. Most of the company’s subscribers are prepaid, and China Mobile’s average revenue per user is around $12. JMCC will charge an additional fee equivalent to about $3 per month, Vice said, which reflects about 20% of the company’s average revenue per user.
Vice described Jiangsu Province as one of the country’s wealthier provinces, with a population of about 85 million people and a healthy business population to target. “This is a very exciting announcement for us and I think has the potential to be an extremely large opportunity for Kodiak,” said Vice.
Regional strategy
In China, he added, where Kodiak has had a local office since 2005, companies who work with China Mobile typically must get their technologies deployed in one or two provinces before they have the opportunity to approach company headquarters about a largerscale, network-wide deployment. Vice said that Kodiak has “been getting very positive sings from China Mobile in Beijing that this is something they definitely are interested in, in terms of a national rollout or at least a rollout in larger and wealthier provinces.”
