Converging Push-to-Talk At The Desktop?
The term “collaboration”
is becoming increasingly popular to describe person-to-person communications
between enterprise working teams and groups. Some pundits think of
collaboration only in terms of real-time voice or video conferencing or
requiring the online exchange of files and documents. However, all forms of
personal contact and communication must be included in our definition of
collaborative multi-modal telecommunications. (Let’s start calling it “MMT”
for short, yet another acronym to remember!) For this reason, enterprise
users will need converged and flexible alternatives for initiating,
receiving, and dynamically changing the modality of their personal contacts.
Instant text messaging
(IM) services introduced us to the “buddy list” and presence management for
online immediate message exchange at the desktop. Unfortunately,
implementations by the major service providers were not only “closed” and
proprietary, but were aggressively kept shut by the likes of AOL. IM’s voice
counterpart for mobile users appeared as “push-to-talk” (PTT) or
“walkie-talkie” for cell phones using a different methodology for setting up
group contact lists. It, too has been treated as a closed proprietary
service offering. However, as enterprise personnel increasingly use both IM
and mobile phones on new VoIP and Wi-Fi networks, we will need to bridge the
communication boundaries between mobile and desktop users for exploiting
“instant voice conferencing.”
MOBILE “PUSH-TO-TALK” – PAST IS PROLOGUE
We have a tendency to
forget that there is really nothing new under the sun when you consider
basic functionality of telecommunication technology. It’s just that when you
change the environment, the appearance, or the procedure, you don’t
recognize it anymore. So it is with the hot wireless service,
“Push-to-talk.” In one respect, it is a descendent of the familiar
“intercom” feature of traditional wired phone systems used in the enterprise
where station sets could be directly interconnected by pushing dedicated
buttons. It is also a descendent of older half-duplexed handheld radio
systems where the term “walkie-talkie” originated. In turn, we have these
two forms of “instant” voice connections converging to join a multi-modal
environment for VoIP networks.
PTT offers several
benefits over traditional voice conferencing methodologies that make it
particularly useful for time-sensitive, ad hoc voice calls that don’t
require extensive discussions:
- Faster initiation of
group contacts – just pushing a button
- Shorter calls by virtue
of half-duplex exchanges, rather than full-duplex conversations
- Anyone within a preset
group can initiate the connection at any time
- Although a connection
cannot always be guaranteed, the use of personal, handheld devices,
presence management, and “one-number” (multiple device signaling), etc.
can maximize successful contacts
- Lower costs for usage
based upon VoIP connections
-
BRINGING IN SIP, PRESENCE AND AVAILABILITY MANAGMENT
It should be pretty clear
by now that any form of intrusive real-time contact will have to come under
the control of some kind of personal availability and modality management.
People can’t always be accessible for everything! To this end, visual text
IM has successfully exploited presence management, letting contact
initiators know if the recipient is online, idle, or away from their PC.
PTT services have also
provided similar availability controls for the recipient and feedback to the
initiator. This is particularly important because of ongoing conversations
and new incoming voice calls. We expect to see PTT contacts become another
limited multi-modal communication option that can be transformed
dynamically, if required, into a full-duplex voice call.
Of course, the basic
Quality of Service considerations for any VoIP connection will apply and,
where multi-party conferencing is involved, voice quality can be
detrimentally affected.
At the moment, current PTT
offerings are limited to proprietary wireless carrier service offerings,
some exploiting new VoIP connectivity. PTT is also focused on handheld
wireless cell phones where the need for faster and less expensive contacts
with mobile personnel is most pressing. However, enterprise (text) IM
management is just beginning to take off, providing security and access
control gateways to the leading proprietary commercial IM services. The
interoperable convergence of these two capabilities combined with the power
of device-independent SIP for end-to-end connectivity coordination, will
support PTT as a faster and more cost efficient alternative to
conversational voice calls.
Part 2
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