If you think drivers yammering on their cell phones are annoying, wait until another wireless service already popular among business users becomes even more prevalent in public: instant, two-way walkie-talkie chatter.
The radio technology frequently used by police officers, truckers, taxi drivers and IT managers is coming to many cell phones near you. All the major wireless carriers, which plan this year to join leader Nextel Communications in rolling out nationwide cell-phone walkie-talkie -- or "push-to-talk" -- service, have said the feature is not just for businesses. It's for everyone, from men radioing their wives from the bread aisle of the supermarket to teens arranging meetings with friends in the schoolyard. At least one company, fastmobile of Chicago, sells software to let people instantly connect with friends around the world.
For those people pushing legislation to ban cell-phone use in cars and public places, the idea of going somewhere and falling prey to someone's two-way phone conversation sounds obnoxious. But the walkie-talkie cell-phone providers are onto something: Many people -- and not just businesses -- want this service.
A recent study by market research company Zelos Group found that 45 percent of customers who subscribe to wireless phone companies other than Nextel, which for years was the only company to offer cell-phone walkie-talkie service, wanted the feature in the next cell-phone they buy. In the study, researchers asked 1,300 cell-phone users to rank 10 preferred features on their phones. Push-to-talk ranked second only to embedded digital cameras, while Bluetooth wireless finished 10th.
"There's definitely substantial consumer interest," said Seamus McAteer, principal analyst at Zelos Group and the report's author.
While incredulous cell-phone users ask why anyone would want such a disruptive service that is plagued by latency and incompatibility among the various providers, McAteer and others in the industry say the answer is simple. The cost to arrange a quick meeting through push-to-talk is cheaper -- not to mention faster -- than a regular cell-phone call. Fastmobile, for example, charges $3 to $4 a month, depending on whether the customer is on a month-to-month or yearlong contract, for unlimited push-to-talk service worldwide. The company says it has 1,000 paying customers and another 1,000 people, mainly business partners and potential distributors, testing the service.
"Just download the software directly from our website," said Harry Eschel, co-founder and executive vice president of fastmobile. "We have sold the service since May even though we have not done any marketing or promotions yet."
The catch to the fastmobile "fastchat" service is that customers must subscribe to the data services of AT&T Wireless, Cingular Wireless or T-Mobile, which use the network technology most common with cell phones abroad. Verizon Wireless and Sprint PCS both use a competing technology incompatible with the fastmobile service.
Nextel has since brought down the pricing of its "Direct Connect" service to compete with Verizon Wireless, which launched its own push-to-talk service in August. Nextel's cell-phone service plans start at $40 a month for 500 anytime local-calling minutes, unlimited night and weekend local calling and 4,500 minutes for Direct Connect. Long distance calls on the Nextel network cost 20 cents a minute.
Verizon's cheapest cell-phone service plan that includes push-to-talk costs $60 a month. The plan includes unlimited push-to-talk, free unlimited group calling, unlimited night and weekend minutes and 1,000 minutes to make phone calls anywhere in the country.
But Nextel and Verizon won't be the only providers in this space. Sprint PCS said it would roll out a walkie-talkie service by the end of the year. Mobile phone manufacturers Ericsson, Motorola, Nokia and Siemens collaborated on a push-to-talk standard that would ensure their products worked with each other. That standard has yet to receive approval by the Open Mobile Alliance standards body, though. Nokia, however, told Wired News recently it plans to release a walkie-talkie cell phone by next year.
As more companies jump into this space and work to ensure that their services interact with each other, it is likely that prices for cell-phone walkie-talkie service will fall -- and that more people will use push-to-talk, McAteer said. The Zelos Group analyst envisions a future in which parents purchase a family plan for both cell-phone and push-to-talk service. The walkie-talkie service would help parents keep closer tabs on their children, McAteer said.
"Really, the appeal of push-to-talk over making a telephone call is being able to talk to a group instantly, without waiting for someone to answer," he said.
But one group that may not want the technology to become too popular is the business users who already have push-to-talk phones courtesy of their companies. Kevin McCarthy, a purchasing manager at Meyer Sound Laboratories -- a company in Berkeley, California, that makes concert speakers -- is one such user. He doesn't consider the technology more convenient than a cell-phone call because the walkie-talkie service does have a bit of latency.
"It's great when you initially press it and talk instantly," he said. "But then from that point on, it's very slow. You talk, press the button and wait for them to reply. If they press their button and start talking to you and you haven't stopped pressing yours, you can't hear them and they can't hear you."
McCarthy said he was recently dismayed to discover someone using the walkie-talkie service while working out at the gym.
"It was absolutely annoying," he said. "I was at the gym the other day and someone was talking on it for about 10 minutes. It beeps every time (a walkie-talkie call comes in) and he had it on speakerphone, and was talking away."
