How to buy PTT over Cellular

There is a lot of buzz at the moment about using Push-To-Talk over Cellular services in conjunction with smartphones, but if you are looking to invest in them, what do you need to consider? Simon Creasey investigates

Push-To-Talk over Cellular (PoC) applications have been around for about a decade, and although the basic technology that underpins them has barely changed over the past few years, the rugged smartphone market has witnessed some seismic hardware shifts. Until recently, users had to ‘make do’ with standard ruggedised smartphones that weren’t specifically designed to handle PoC applications, according to Andrew Wilson, managing director at Syndico.

In most cases there wasn’t even a dedicated push-to-talk (PTT) button on the handset. However, today there is a whole host of different rugged smartphones with PoC capabilities that have been designed from the ground up, and this latest generation of kit is starting to drive significant uptake from end-users. But given the growing number of competing bits of hardware on the market, what do businesses need to consider when procuring rugged smartphones with a view to running PoC applications on them?

Although PoC rugged smartphone devices are widely in use, with the number of users growing all the time, there was initial reluctance in the dealer channel to accept them, says Wilson.