iDEN PTT now works on Moto WLAN

It's widely known that walkie-talkie users tend to favor the industry's initial push-to-talk (PTT) technology, which Motorola developed for its iDEN network, for its speed advantages. I just recently learned that the company has added iDEN PTT to its suite of Wi-Fi enterprise mobility services.

IDEN, of course, is best known as a service operated by Sprint Nextel in the United States.

Now, users connected to Motorola enterprise WLANs using Motorola Wi-Fi handsets can communicate with PTT users with two-way radios, including the Motorola iDEN i850. Motorola's Radio Link Solution (RLS), a module for its Wireless Services Manager (WSM) appliance, makes this possible, serving as a bridge between the two talk groups.

The Motorola WSM is an overlay to the company's enterprise WLAN infrastructure. Today, the WSM delivers vendor-agnostic IP PBX telephony-feature integration across Motorola WLANs. These include the PTT functions between WLAN handsets such as the company's own EWP1000 and EWP2000 Wi-Fi smart phones and a number of two-way radios in addition to the Motorola iDEN i850.

If you've been around for several years, you might recall that several years ago, Motorola had teamed with Avaya and Proxim to create an early fixed-mobile convergence (FMC) solution involving handoff of voice calls between Wi-Fi and cellular networks. The WSM was an integral part of that solution, which also included a specialized dual-mode Motorola handset that is no longer in production. Since then, the WSM has evolved into an integrated voice-data services platform for the WLAN.

Meantime, Motorola has just announced that it has beefed up its RF management tools, announcing several enhancements to its One Point Wireless Suite. It has added Motorola Broadband Planner for designing and deploying Motorola outdoor meshed or bridged wireless networks and updated its LANPlanner WLAN predictive modeling tool to better account for voice over WLAN traffic. The company also enhanced its RF Management System tools suite to be able to monitor wireless and wired infrastructure devices from multiple vendors.

Joanie Wexler is an independent networking technology writer/editor in Silicon Valley.