US : Industry leaders Ericsson, Motorola, Nokia and Siemens mobile announced the completion of a jointly developed Push to talk over Cellular (PoC) specification based on the IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) as defined by 3GPP. This specification is intended to reduce marketplace fragmentation and provide end users with an easy-to-use push to talk experience wherever they may travel in the world. It was completed to meet a tremendous market interest in push to talk and IMS.

The PoC specification leverages existing 3GPP, OMA, and IETF specifications making the service easy to integrate in operators' existing access and packet core network infrastructures. The PoC specification is a bundle of six specifications including: Requirements, Architecture, Signaling Flows, Group/List Management, and two User-plane specifications (Transport and GPRS).

Ericsson, Motorola, Nokia and Siemens Mobile formed this PoC "technology co-operation" to produce a joint, fast track technology proposal to provide mobile operators with the assurance of easy integration, global interoperability and a competitive handset
environment in the mobile communications market. The companies have submitted this specification to the Open Mobile Alliance (OMA) standards body for review as a baseline to provide an access-independent and globally interoperable standard for PoC.

Additionally, the PoC Specification has gained support from other industry leaders such as AT&T Wireless Services (NYSE: AWE), Cingular, Sonim Technologies, and Sony Ericsson. The specifications are currently available at http://www.ericsson.com/products/product_selector/Inst_Talk_hpsol.shtml

"End-users want to be able to use any enabled handset on any available network without having to worry about if they work together. This is true for all mobile services and push to talk will be no different," said Torbjörn Nilsson, Senior Vice President, Marketing and Strategic Business Development at Ericsson. "The access independent, interoperable, global industry specification that the major vendors now have agreed on is an important step towards ensuring that the end-users will get this."

"We realize how important interoperability is for the successful adoption of push to talk in the marketplace," said Philip Gilchrist, Vice President of Global Standards, Technical Asset Management and Advanced Solutions Realizations. "By working with mobile operators and other mobile handset and infrastructure leaders, we will be able to provide a clear PoC standard and rapidly bring interoperable solutions to market."

"Push to talk offers a fast and convenient way for connecting people globally," said Paul Chellgren, Senior Vice President, Product Management and Business Development, Nokia Mobile Phones Americas. "The common approach to this technology by key vendors will enable us to bring the traditional usage of a two-way radio to a completely new level and accelerate the take-off of this new service. There clearly is a lot of demand on the market for a standardized push to talk solution."

"Siemens mobile is committed to open standards and we see encouraging potential in push to talk," said Rudi Lamprecht, Board Member of Siemens AG. "We had positive feedback from different operators and with this joint effort we are confident to bring push to talk to a success."

"Customers want services they know are dependable, easy-to-use and affordable," said Rod Nelson, Chief Technology Officer for AT&T Wireless. "An open interoperable specification for an important IMS service like push-to-talk is a big advantage and will give customers a winning solution."

"Standards lead to services transparency in the eyes of the customer and that is the route to widespread adoption. Just as we saw with the interoperability of SMS, the ability for one customer to interact with another, without regard to their service provider, will be key to the success of this service," said Bill Clift, Chief Technology
Officer - Cingular Wireless. "This is an important step in that direction."