Bell Adds New Push-to-Talk Service
Bell launched a Push-to-talk (PTT) communication service on April 24th, offering advanced 4G network speed and broader coverage than competing services.
“Bell is proud to be first to introduce the next generation of Push-to-talk service to Canadian business customers. Combining fast data speeds, coverage for 97 percent of the Canadian population and the latest Push-to-talk phones and features, Bell PTT is a powerful and innovative communications service built to serve in the most demanding business environments now and into the future,” said Wade Oosterman, President of Bell Mobility.
Push-to-talk is like turning your mobile into a walkie talkie and is well-suited to businesses which make extensive use of instant-contact services such as transportation, construction, farming, oil and gas, mining and security.
Bell reports that 15 percent of Canadians work outdoors and its target market includes nearly 1 million workers.
Bell’s PTT service offers instant communications at the press of a button with up to 100 users, extensive Canadian coverage and US roaming, data speeds of up to 21 Megabits per second, and new cloud services such as Contact Administrative Tool (CAT) that enables business to update and manage their contact lists through an online portal.
The new PTT service is now available on multiple devices including, the BlackBerry Curve 9360 smartphone, the Samsung Galaxy S II 4G superphone, and the ultra-rugged Sonim XP5520 BOLT from Sonim Technologies, well-known for producing the world’s toughest phones.
TELUS also offers a push-to-talk service in Canada, which uses an Integrated Digital Enhanced Network (iDEN) cellular technology, that many experts consider outdated.
Please discuss this further on our Bell Mobility forum.
There service appears to have similar features to the one that AT&T announced a few months ago. That service uses Kodiak Networks system. Looks like this one does too.
Bell and Telus both had PTT services over their CDMA network back in 2003 – 2005 which turned out to be worse than Telus’s already existing MIKE service.
The concept is not new and Bell shouldn’t be touting this as a new service and making themselves out to be such big innovators. They’ve already been down this road and are perhaps hoping that people forgot about the fact that last time they did this and it failed, they abandoned their clients trapping them with crap phones in 3 year contracts that were totally useless.
The service is new in that it uses the new HSPA network. This allows for simultaneous voice and data communications at a very high speed. It also will allow Bell to use more devices like the Samsung GS2 and the some of the blackberry devices.
Have had Bell’s 10-4 for years and it is perfect. No long distance charges, and no roam charges in the USA. Sorry to see it go … and refuse to purchase new phones, ie, new long expensive plan.