The service, known as Talk Now, builds on the early experiences of P2T walkie-talkie services by local mobile operators, most notably P2T pioneer, Nextel Communications Inc. Orange has tweaked the concept in an effort to broaden its appeal and usage among international business users.
Features in Talk Now described as world firsts by Orange include an SMS-enabled presence capability, giving users (near) instant knowledge of which of their contacts are reachable by means of icons signifying availability (a smiley face for yes, a no-entry sign for no)
Orange has attempted to make the user experience as simple as possible, making the service available from the handset’s home screen with one button push. A single Talk Now message can be distributed to up to 30 contacts simultaneously. Unavailable contacts will receive a voicemail message instead.
Talk Now is also unique in providing international service availability, albeit only on Orange’s own networks for the time being. Orange plans to take the service fully commercial in the second quarter in the UK and France before rolling it out steadily across its other networks during the third and fourth quarters.
This article is based on material originally published by ComputerWire
