PRESSING NEED?

The current headline-grabber in wireless is push-to-talk, the two-way radio application that was pioneered by Nextel Communications and is now offered by Verizon Wireless—and, as this week's cover story points out, could soon be provided by Sprint PCS as well. The prominence of the application is proof that voice still rules the mobile roost—that wireless service providers are grasping for new ways to make money by mobilizing the spoken word.

But the alleged popularity of push-to-talk service seems dubious. While its utility for certain customer segments is clear—the workgroup functionality for a team of construction workers on a job site or an IT staff spanning multiple corporate locations cannot be denied, as Nextel has proved—the usefulness for the general business and mass consumer markets is debatable.

In terms of time management and productivity for workers in an office environment, push-to-talk seems about as effective—and as intrusive—as its text counterpart, instant messaging. And while members of a family may find the application useful for keeping track of one another on their next trip to a theme park, how much the mass consumer audience will use push-to-talk in their everyday lives remains to be seen.

Wireless carriers could easily debunk that prediction by ringing up big revenue gains—or they could find that the expense of creating, deploying and marketing push-to-talk applications would have been better spent elsewhere.