FastMobile Pushes to Talk

LONDON -- fastmobile today launched its push-to-talk mobile service, fastchat, into the European mobile retail market, unveiling a commercial alliance with Wizcom Limited, a part of Caudwell Group, the UK's market-leading mobile communications provider.

From October, fastmobile's 'fastchat' voice-text application will be sold throughout the UK by Phones4U, Caudwell Group's mobile phone retail chain.

The agreement marks the first time that any voice-text service will be available to European consumers via high street retail stores.

fastchat combines a walkie-talkie-style instant voice-text facility with the latest multimedia messaging capabilities - including picture, video, e mail and text - into one easy-to-use application that enables subscribers to chat with friends across mobile carriers, handset models and also to PCs globally.

The service is currently suitable for Symbian Series 60 handsets including Nokia's 7650 and 3650, the Sony Ericsson P800 and the new Motorola A920. New Series 60-based phones due for launch include the Nokia N-Gage, Nokia 6600, Samsung SGH-D700 and Siemens SX1, and plans are also in hand to dramatically increase the number of handsets in time for the Christmas sales season.

The service requires no special hardware to be added to either the mobile handsets or to operators' networks, and does not affect other network operator services. fastchat will be sold as an application to existing phones and as a value added service to new purchasers.

James Tagg, European managing director of fastmobile, said: "fastchat works out-of-the-box on all the UK's mobile networks, meaning we've never had complex interoperability agreements with which to contend, and also meaning Phones4U's fastchat customers do not have to worry about whether their friends and contacts are on the same or a compatible network in order to use it.

"We're naturally aiming to make fastchat the de facto standard for push-to-talk services in the UK and Europe, and now we have significant first-to-market advantage.

"With Caudwell Group leading the way, we're continuing to talk to additional channels to market worldwide, including other retailers, phone manufacturers and mobile network operators," he added.

The appeal of fastchat is different to each market channel. Tagg continued: "For phone manufacturers, the mass availability of a next-generation messaging service could provide additional impetus to sales of new phones, while to the phone retailer, the benefits include improved margin on sales and the opportunity to upsell.

"To the mobile operator, there will be an increase in average revenue per user through a surge in data network usage, and for the consumer voice-text messaging is likely to be less intimidating than, for example, new 3G video-messaging services."

Ian O'Reilly, director of Wizcom, the mobile value added services arm of the Caudwell Group added: "The push-to-talk communications feature has been very successful in the US. Our launch of fastchat will be one of the first applications to truly use the always-on capabilities of GPRS in the UK and, strategically, we believe this type of application is exactly the type of service that will produce incremental revenues in the consumer market."

fastchat is comparable with North American operator Nextel's push-to-talk service, which brings that operator around 20% of its revenue. Several mobile network operators worldwide are either trialing or about to trial fastchat.

fastchat makes messaging easier, quicker, potentially cheaper and more fun then other current forms of messaging, enabling mobile phone users to get more from their handsets and make a real difference to their work and social life.

FastMobile Inc.