Commercial launch in 2005
Eurotel Praha has launched the Czech Republic’s first Push to talk over Cellular technology, using a solution provided by Nokia. Eurotel will follow this initial launch of technology with a full commercial launch in early 2005.
In addition to a complete PoC solution, Nokia is providing implementation and care services for the deployment of the solution. Nokia is also supplying Nokia 5140 mobile phones, which support PoC. Nokia has been Eurotel’s main supplier of GSM network systems since 1996.
“Over the years, our cooperation with Eurotel has been extremely important to us,” said Matti Palomaki, Country Director, Networks, Nokia. “We are pleased to see this close cooperation strengthened even further with the launch of this attractive and instant form of mobile communications.”
“We have always looked to Nokia for innovative end-to-end solutions,” said Michal Herman, Chief Executive Officer of Eurotel Praha, spol. s r.o. “Nokia’s support leading up to the launch of our push to talk technology has been key to bringing this exciting technology to our market. We strongly believe that push to talk will open up new communication possibilities to our customers.”
With more than 30 operator trials ongoing and commercial contracts with 22 operators, Nokia is leading the market for Push to talk over Cellular in GSM. Nokia’s solution offers a full feature set and smooth migration to the upcoming Open Mobile Architecture (OMA) standard, and it is compatible with the IP multimedia subsystem as standardized in 3GPP.
Nokia has introduced several push to talk phones. The Nokia 5140, Nokia 6260, Nokia 6170 and Nokia 7270 are already commercially available. The Nokia 6020 and Nokia 3230 are expected to be shipping in the first quarter of 2005. Also, users of Nokia 6600, Nokia 6620, Nokia 6670 or Nokia 7610 are able to use push to talk by downloading the push to talk client to their terminals. From 2005 onwards, push to talk will become available for almost all Nokia GPRS/WCDMA phones.