Espoo, Finland - Nokia and 3 Scandinavia are trialling Nokia Push to talk over Cellular (PoC) service in the Swedish market. With push to talk, people can use their mobile phones like walkie-talkies, communicating with a selected group or with individuals at the push of a button. The trial is initially targeted to business users, but private and business users alike can benefit from this simple, direct communication.
 
To ensure the success of the trial in 3 Scandinavia's WCDMA 3G network, Nokia leverages its leading position in GSM-based PoC, unique experience from terminals, knowledge of consumer behavior, and systems integration. Nokia will provide selected push to talk handsets, including Nokia 6280, for potential use in the trial.
 
"We strive to offer innovative services to appeal to all our customers. Push to talk is a fascinating new service for business users in particular," says J?rgen Askeroth, Chief Technology Officer, 3 Scandinavia. "We chose to trial push to talk with Nokia because their end-to-end solution will be compliant with the OMA (Open Mobile Alliance) standard, and because of Nokia's service commitment and capability to support the PoC platform."
 
"We are very pleased to work together with 3 Scandinavia in trialling push to talk," says Bob Bird, Vice President, Networks, Nokia. "We are confident that this trial strengthens Nokia's position as a leader in push to talk worldwide."
 
Nokia's end-to-end push to talk solution offers a full feature set, and will be compliant with the OMA standard. Nokia's solution is compatible with the IP Multimedia Subsystem as standardized in 3GPP, and it will be capable of supporting various push-to-media, such as video. With commercial contracts for 45 PoC service offerings, and several operator trials ongoing, Nokia is leading the market for Push to talk over Cellular in GSM. Nokia has launched 30 PoC handsets, out of which 20 are available in Sweden and 5 are 3G terminals.