Nokia and 3 Scandinavia are testing Nokia Push to talk over Cellular (PoC) service in the Swedish market. With push to talk, people can use their mobile phones like walkie-talkies.

To ensure the success of the trial in 3 Scandinavia’s WCDMA 3G network, Nokia leverages its leading position in GSM-based PoC. Nokia will provide selected push to talk handsets, including Nokia 6280, for potential use in the trial.

“We strive to offer innovative services to appeal to all our customers. Push to talk is a fascinating new service for business users in particular,” says Jörgen Askeroth, Chief Technology Officer, 3 Scandinavia. “We chose to trial push to talk with Nokia because their end-to-end solution will be compliant with the OMA (Open Mobile Alliance) standard, and because of Nokia’s service commitment and capability to support the PoC platform.”

Nokia’s end-to-end push to talk solution offers a full feature set, and will be compliant with the OMA standard. Nokia’s solution is compatible with the IP Multimedia Subsystem as standardized in 3GPP, and it will be capable of supporting various push-to-media, such as video. With commercial contracts for 45 PoC service offerings, and several operator trials ongoing, Nokia is leading the market for Push to talk over Cellular in GSM. Nokia has launched 30 PoC handsets, out of which 20 are available in Sweden and 5 are 3G terminals.

3 was the first to launch 3G services in Sweden in May 2003 and Denmark in October 2003. In Scandinavia, 3 is a joint venture between Hutchison-Whampoa (60%) and Investor AB (40%).