The wireless market has matured and subscriber growth rates have slowed. To help drive continued revenue growth, wireless carriers are increasingly promoting add-on services such as Mobile Broadband and Push-to-Talk (PTT). Similar to walkie-talkie, Push-to-Talk is a half duplex system where one person talks and other(s) listen. Push-to-Talk supports a near instant connection and also allows a single person to reach an active talk group at a push of a button.

Push-to-Talk is not likely to become a mass market service as other wireless applications, such as SMS, have. Nevertheless, PTT could continue to represent fast growth and interesting returns. The key to leveraging the PTT opportunity will be to improve target marketing and sales strategies, particularly for non-traditional customers segments. While Push-to-Talk has largely been a business-oriented service, carriers need to tap underserved segments, particularly small businesses and consumers.

• 7% of mobile subscribers in the US are push-to-talk subscribers today, or roughly 18 million.

• Those that subscribe to PTT prefer the service because of the convenience, particularly the convenience of an instant connection.

• While 12% of respondents to a Compass Intelligence survey currently use PTT, nearly 69% indicated no interest in the service, indicating that there is a limited addressable market for this service.

Prepared by Amy Cravens, Contributing Analyst at Compass Intelligence (www.compassintelligence.com)