OMA announces PoC 1.0 spec

The Open Mobile Alliance (OMA) has emerged from 18 months of work on the push-to-talk over cellular (PoC) specification with the OMA PoC 1.0 Candidate Enabler, an important step in allowing interoperability between push-to-talk services provided by different network operators, as well as other key features.

Version 1.0 supports person-to-person PoC sessions and one-to-many PoC session based either on pre-established group lists or ad hoc distribution, said Craig Rhoades, the OMA’s PoC Working Group Chairman.

Also supported in the specification are instant personal alerts for inviting users into PoC sessions, as well as group advertisements to simultaneously distribute invitations to large numbers of users.

Rhoades said OMA member companies recently conducted interoperability tests that involved six servers and eight different clients using the 1.0 Candidate Enabler. Also, just yesterday, the OMA held an event in San Diego in which executives from Cingular Wireless, Ericsson, Nokia, Siemens, Sonim and Vodafone participated in a panel discussion on the importance of PoC standardization and their commitment to the new spec.

Based on the interoperability test, Rhoades said the OMA PoC Working Group probably will make some minor adjustments to the specification before issuing a final version later this year.

OMA PoC 1.0 incorporates key features of other OMA Enablers, including OMA XML Document Management Enabler and OMA Presence Enabler. These Enablers contribute group list management and integration of users’ presence and availability information to OMA PoC 1.0. Rhoades also said the PoC architectural spec uses SIP, making it a natural fit in the IP multimedia subsystem architectures being planned by many network operators.

For more than a year, several vendors of push-to-talk solutions have been marketing their offerings as PoC-compliant. Though the specification is just becoming available, Jari Alvinen, Chairman of the Board of the OMA, doesn’t think vendors jumped the gun.

“One of the things that happens with new services is that people announce pre-standard implementations,” he said. “Now, they have a baseline to comply to.”