And speaking of Nextel and the endless push-to-talk discourse, who are these people that prefer suspending their phone mid-air six inches in front of their face and sharing both sides of their conversation with everybody in a 10 foot radius emulating walkie-talkies? Sure I could see doing that in certain, niche applications (like a meeting/speakerphone) or some businesses, but please - routinely as an alternative to using (mobile) phone?? I supposed if it were fully-interoperable we would see the real appeal for this. 3GPP is working on this standard...

Look at the primitive photo-montage above. There is only one person who looks comfortable and natural with their handset - and it is none other than Nextel CEO Tim Donahue himself in this photo from Fortune Magazine and and article about Nextel's niche. Yes - Nextel has low churn and high ARPU, but is that due to Direct-connect, or, their relentless push toward marketing to enterprises? some of Nextel's other accomplishments include a recent blend with RadioFrame to integrate WiFi with iDen for IBM. The Fortune piece mentions an application with Roto-Rooter, but I must have missed all of the Boost Mobile references. hmmm..

Well, Verizon is apparently struggling with PTT as Sprint looks to roll their version out. Rather than the iDen technology that Nextel uses, these firms are using what could be described as an "after market" version. Companies such as Winphoria and Togabi have developed these, as have QUALCOMM's QChat and others. The biggest difference is performance is the long set-up time (latency): 5 seconds instead of half a second..."push-and-wait-to-talk" is more like it.

Is this the best we, and an industry, can do? location-specific apps should have been available by now...that's technology to get excited about.