Orange Deploys Push To Talk With the Treo 600

Orange has announced the commercial availability of Talk Now, Europe’s first advanced Push-To-Talk over GSM service. The first device able to take advantage of the new service is the palmOne Treo 600.

Over the last nine months, Orange has engaged in customer trials across Europe to develop and refine the commercial Talk Now™ service, giving customers a new instant way of communicating alongside their existing voice and messaging services. It enables easy-to-access instant one-to-one and group calling with the added benefit of a real-time availability icon, so customers can see who is available to talk, and who is not. Customers can also create “team lists” that can be used to facilitate instant conference calling with up to 10 participants at any one time. Talk Now can also be switched to silent mode to ensure that people in the vicinity are not disturbed.

Orange named Alcatel, LG, Nokia, PalmOne and Sagem, as the first manufacturers in its Talk Now pan-European handset catalogue. The service will have a common user interface regardless of the handset. In the UK, the service will initially be available on the Treo 600.

The Orange Talk Now service is powered by Kodiak Networks's Real-Time Exchange (RTX) System, which enables an entirely new category of Advanced Voice Services, including PTT, with offerings that include:

• Instant Availability - Ability to see who's available to receive a call
• Instant Calling - Real-time "Push to Talk" calling
• Instant Conferencing - Real-time conferencing with members of a group
• Instant Contact Management - Create contact and group distribution lists directly on the handset

The new service is available today from Orange Business Solutions in the UK, and will be available later in the year for UK small business and personal customers. As well as the UK, Talk Now™ is due to be launched this year by Orange in France, then in Switzerland, the Caribbean, Romania, Slovakia, The Netherlands, the Dominican Republic, Belgium (Mobistar) and Jordan (Mobilecom) during the following months.