In the market for… PTT over Cellular platforms

PoC provides two-way radio style services over cellular networks, but there are some key factors that potential customers need to check out before committing, as James Atkinson reports

4G LTE networks are now capable of providing the data speeds and low latency to make Push-to-Talk over Cellular (PoC) services a very attractive proposition. A number of PoC platforms are now established in the UK and elsewhere to provide customers with a reasonable choice.

The first thing to ask is what can the PoC platform guarantee in terms of Quality of Service (QoS), reliability, availability and security? PoC providers are obviously reliant on the performance of the Mobile Network Operators’ (MNOs’) networks, but they can offer higher QoS than consumers get as Tim Allerton, CEO of UK-based Push to Talk International (PTTi), explains.

“We wanted to provide some level of QoS, so we only use static IPs and dedicated APNs [Access Point Name - the gateway between the 2G, 3G and 4G networks and PTTi’s servers]. We can negotiate priority access for that APN. We then use the operator’s QCIs (QoS Class Identifiers) and ARPs (Allocation Retention Priority) to provide dedicated data services to our customers for both the uplink and downlink.