With all the hype about SKYPE, here’s a home grown company from the USA’s Mid-West, FastMobile, may have hit on a highly useful, easily deployed and most welcome service months or years before interoperable carrier neutral P2T (push to talk) will really arrive on the scene.
Just starting to get notoriety for their “Phone to Phone” service FastMobile’s FastChat client works on more than just a select group of handsets. What makes this the killer Voice application today is that it works NOW on Internet connected Windows laptops and desktops, using their beta download, and more importantly with WiFi connected Pocket PC’s running Pocket PC 2002 or 2003 which is available upon request.
While the bulk of the attention about their offerings usually gets paid to the phone handset capabilities, as it provides pure GSM/GPRS push to talk regardless of what carrier either party is using, the underlying benefit is when there is any IP connection enabling any IP device (called an end point) to converse. With FastChat P2T conversations can be done phone to phone, phone to Pocket PC, phone to PC, PC to PC, PC to Pocket PC, etc.
FastChat is really carrier and platform independent voice communications. And, if someone is not using FastChat, a voice message link can be sent to either AIM or MSN’s instant messaging clients from either the phone or PC, with Pocket PC soon to follow. And, one better is the ability to send an FastChat message by email to those who are not as connected.
This is truly Voice over IP over GSM, but as FastMobile deploys wider, CDMA can’t be that far behind, putting them smack in the middle of the Voice messaging market.
So, while SKYPE now talks about their Pocket PC client, users can only talk to other SKYPE users. With a FastChat enabled device anyone using FastChat can pretty much Push To Talk to anyone on the Internet. Now that's delivering voice communications ubiquity TODAY.
How sweet it is !!
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