Twisted Pair turns BlackBerrys into two-way radios

Two-way radio technology is no stranger to the mobile industry. Nextel and Motorola’s (NYSE:MOT) iDEN technology pioneered that application on cellphones over a decade ago. But push-to-talk (PTT) communications has been confined to the network the service is offered over. PTT between wireless networks, to say nothing of between different network standards, is largely unheard of. But today at the International Wireless Communications Expo, radio-over-IP specialist Twisted Pair Solutions unveiled a proof-of-concept phone client that could bridge the yawning gaps between networks.

Twisted Pair produces the Wave unified group communications software used all over the world to link disparate public safety, government and enterprise land mobile radio system (LMRS) networks to one another and to circuit-switched and IP telephony networks – in essence, extending radio communications to the cellular network. Anyone watching a cop show where a detective on a cellphone is “patched in” on the police radio network by dispatch knows the technology, said James Mustarde, director of marketing for Twisted Pair. But in those cases, the networks are being bridged while the interfaces are not, Mustarde said. Twisted Pair wanted to create a cellphone that essentially functioned as a two-way radio on any network, no matter what standard, what manufacturer, or what location, Mustarde said.

“I want to be able to use my handset as a two-way radio to listen in and participate in group communications on the radio network from anywhere in the world,” Mustarde said.

Twisted Pair decided to build a proof-of-concept thin client push-to-talk application for the Research in Motion (NASDAQ:RIMM) BlackBerry platform, using the phone’s active 3G data or WiFi connection to channels link back to a Wave soft-console. The company’s IP-radio software transcodes that session into format of its network destination and sends it onto the LMRS network, an extension on the enterprise LAN, or even back onto another cellular network.

While the obvious utility of the application is to link employees’ wireless handsets into their employer’s private radio network, the solution could be used to create an ad hoc radio private radio in its own right, Mustarde said. The Wave platform enables any point-to-point connection, so an enterprise could simply use cellphones to create a virtual 2-way radio network limited by know geography or operator.

While Twisted Pair developed the PTT client for the BlackBerry, it is by no means limited that platform, Mustarde explained. Twisted Pair wanted to create a proof-of-concept implementation to demonstrate to other developers who could then create their own clients or integrate the technology into other enterprise applications.