Industry Focused On Push To Talk

It's no secret that the other wireless carriers are jealous of Nextel's success with push-to-talk. They're all getting close to rolling out their own versions of the technology - though Nextel claims they're way ahead of the pack from a technology standpoint. They believe that the solutions being prepared by the other carriers will have much longer call set-up times, which take away much of the benefit of push-to-talk walkie-talkie functionality. The carriers, and the push-to-talk applications companies, like Sonim, say that Nextel is wrong. As for why the sudden focus on push-to-talk offerings? Just take a look at these two numbers: $70 and 2.1%. Nextel has an ARPU (average revenue per user) of $70, which is $8 more than the number two carrier, Sprint PCS (and $28 more than Verizon and T-Mobile). Meanwhile, Nextel's customers are loyal, with oly 2.1% churn - the lowest in the industry (and half the rate of T-Mobile). So, they have the highest revenue per user and the lowest churn - and their only real differentiating factor is push-to-talk. It's pretty obvious why the other carriers are moving in to the space. Interestingly, the article points out that AT&T Wireless toyed with push-to-talk technology five years ago, but gave it up, not believing the demand was really there.