So it’s Friday and as usual Business Week arrived and I paged right to Stephen H. Wildstrom’s tech page. This week he gives the latest PTT (Push to Talk) tech to test and finds as expected (yet not marketed) Verizon’s system sucks. As I previously mentioned, Nextel has a serious technology advantage:
Verizon’s push-to-talk superficially works like Nextel’s. But it takes 10 to 15 seconds after you push the button to establish a connection, something Nextel phones do almost instantaneously. More annoying, there’s a delay of at least five seconds after you speak before the person on the other end hears what you’ve said. The result is a painful pause each time one person finishes speaking. [Business Week]
Why would this even get released?? 10-15 seconds for an initial connect and 5 seconds each time you try to talk afterwards? I bet there will be many customers who either buy and never use the service, or who immediately cancel based on how impossible it would be to have a conversation.