AT&T Mobility announced it will halve the monthly cost of its push-to-talk service — from $10 per month to $5
It’s a move that could spark a PTT price war with AT&T rivals Sprint and Verizon Wireless, says RCR News. Sprint and Verizon currently charge $10 per month for the service.
In conjunction with the PTT price cut, AT&T Mobility also introduced a new PTT phone, the Samsung “Rugby” (right).
The rugged clamshell phone supports AT&T Mobility’s video-sharing feature, and works on the carrier’s 3G network. It costs $130 with a $50 mail-in rebate and two-year agreement.
Verizon Wireless recently launched two new PTT devices on its CDMA2000 1x EV-DO Revision A network while Sprint’s PTT service is interoperable with its legacy Nextel PTT service, based on iDEN. Nextel has more than 15 million users.
Sprint and Verizon are both using Qualcomm’s QChat technology, sending digitized voice over their EVDO data networks, but the other major PTT platform, supplied by Kodiak Networks, and used by AT&T, is incompatible between carriers.
Kodiak supplies its PTT server to AT&T, Alltel, MetroPCS and half a dozen other regional providers in the US, none of which interoperate with one another.
