In my opinion, the PTT competition will be offering a substandard alternative to Direct Connect while pursuing a different market, namely consumers. I seriously doubt Joe Contractor is going to switch to Verizon and lose the ability to Direct Connect to his existing network, which has been 10 years in the making. Ain't going to happen!
FWIW....I agree. I really dont think that this is aimed at the small business market. Consumers will be the primary focus along with larger corporations who might have a small subset of workers who need PTT. For those primarily looking for a PTT handset, Nextel will likely have the best performing solution. However, there are large number of people where it might just be a nice add-on (like the wireless web)....and for those people, PTT might provide Verizon some differentiation with the GSM operators (at least for 6-12 months).
If it were to become popular, it might also help reduce churn among their consumer subs. If you become accustomed to using PTT, and all of your friends have Verizon as well, it lessens the chance that you will churn.
Of course, we will have to wait and see what kind of performance Verizon's PTT solution will have....
Slacker |
