It's difficult to get a tennis game going if only one player has a racquet. Equally, using push-to-talk over cellular (PoC) is tricky without interoperability. The PoC standards initiative of the Open Mobile Alliance (OMA) offers a way around this impasse. As mobile voice revenues come under pressure, operators are looking for innovative services that promise not only to make up this shortfall, but also to increase ARPU. If user reaction to push-to-talk services is anything to go by, they should fit the bill nicely. However, telecom history shows that it might not be quite as simple as that. When people began to use SMS in Europe, they could send text messages across networks and between handset brands and models right from the start — and SMS blossomed. In the US, on the other hand, where interoperability across networks and handsets was not a given, the service failed to thrive.
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