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Fastmobile kickstarts operator race for slice of €1 billion push-to-talk pie
Consumer launch of ‘fastchat™’: fastmobile kickstarts the operator race
for slice of ˆ1 billion P2T pie
Pioneering phone application company fastmobile will next week [Tuesday
April 8th] announce public availability of its push-to-talk (P2T)
service fastchat™, kickstarting a scramble among European mobile network
operators hoping to grab a slice of the ˆ1 billion P2T revenue pie.
A number of mobile network operators from across Europe have already
seen fastchat demonstrations or piloted the technology, and have
expressed interest in offering the service to their network subscribers.
Interested parties include several well-known UK mobile industry
companies.
Push-to-talk has proved a huge success in the United States, to the
extent that operator Nextel already generates around 20 per cent of its
revenue from P2T. If Nextel levels of usage are achieved in the EU then
P2T could rapidly eclipse SMS as the messaging tool of choice.
fastchat works across all UK operators, and in all countries that have
GPRS-enabled networks. Significantly for operators, fastchat is easy to
install, complies with all existing and planned standards, and requires
no infrastructure investment.
fastchat will be available to consumers and to business users from April
8th, initially from the web at www.fastchat.com, for Nokia 7650 and 3650
handsets with the Sony Ericsson P800 following soon. fastmobile plans
full support for all GPRS-enabled Smartphones and mass-market Java
phones.
European managing director James Tagg commented: “When we announce
fastchat, the key points we’ll be conveying are that it’s more fun than
SMS, more flexible, easier to use, quicker, more convenient and no more
expensive.
“Usage is inevitable: customers are buying new phones which are capable
of just about anything, and they will want to use the features. Quickly
they will discover how easy, fun and convenient it is, and it will take
off like SMS did.
For the industry, Tagg believes that fastchat will be the new ‘next big
thing’: “The mobile world has been racking its brains to find something
that will succeed on the scale of SMS. Based on experiences in the
States we believe that fastchat will help to plug the hole left by the
failure of WAP and the delays in 3G.
“Push-to-talk will generate real growth for a number of the industry’s
major players, spurring GPRS adoption which, in turn, is critical to
operator 3G strategy. fastchat is a rare ‘crossover’ service that works
well on today’s 2.5G network but that will be even better when 3G
networks kick in. It has the potential to bring home the bacon now.”
The only question left, Tagg concludes, is to guess just how big “push
to talk” will get: “Our estimates suggest that the push-to-talk market
could be worth a ˆ150 million in Europe over the next year, becoming a
multi-billion euro market in a few years.”
About fastmobile: fastmobile Limited develops advanced messaging
technology products for use on all mobile phone networks in EMEA.
fastmobile Limited is the UK subsidiary of Chicago-based FastMobile,
Inc. The company is backed by private investment and venture capital
from US companies BlueStar Ventures, Leo Capital Holdings and Red Barn
Investments, and raised $4 million in its first round of funding.
The company employs more than 30 people across offices in America, the
United Kingdom and South Korea. More information on the products and
people at fastmobile is available at www.fastmobile.com
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