Is Push-To-Talk Today's CB Radio?
That, at least, appears to be the prediction of Arik Hesseldahl at Forbes, who has written a piece officially about the new focus on push-to-talk by wireless carriers, but which spends a lot more time talking about what a silly fad CB radio was, and wondering if push-to-talk is really any different. Of course, there are plenty of differences between the two (not the least of which is that it's not limited to cars...), but I do think a lot of attention has been paid to push-to-talk as a "savior" for carriers, and that many may discover it's not the pot of gold they were expecting. Nextel sold their service and push-to-talk to specific niche categories of buyers, but not everyone has the same need for push-to-talk, and not everyone is willing to pay extra for it. Sure, Nextel got high ARPUs via push-to-talk, but they certainly didn't have anywhere near as many users. They segmented the market, and went for the high margin users. When everyone is offering push-to-talk, the segmentation goes away - as does the margin.Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
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