Lots of organizations use today’s traditional push-to-talk radios in their operation. Radios are working fine but they are limited to voice communication, their useability is years behind modern devices and organisations are burdened with maintaining a costly radio network.
The Push-to-talk over cellular (PoC) devices are becoming more and more popular now that 4G and 5G cellular network coverage has increased in most countries. PoC Android-based radios have a much higher bandwidth than the traditional radio network and can transmit both audio, video, and pictures. In addition, software applications can be installed on the PoC radio and extend the usage greatly.
Today’s available PoC android devices unite the radio and smartphone advantages. Being durable and long-lasting as a radio they can also transmit way more data and upload applications.
As most traditional radios have very limited abilities to run application the new PoC devices can run the same advanced applications as any smartphone. One example of an application used on PoC devices is ZONITH’s Lone-worker protection app which not only protects the users when they work alone but also provides an intuitive user interface.
Alarm handling which is text messaging based on all traditional radios becomes much more intuitive for the users when they can read the full alarm text. Android apps like ZONITH’s will even present a graphical map showing the location of the alarm source, like a lone-worker in danger. These are functions which will never be available on traditional radios but function very much asked for by the users.
ZONITH have recently conducted tests of the three main manufacturers PoC android devices in Norway, Sweden and Dubai. Both Motorolas Evolve, Hyteras PNC550 and Airbus’s Tactilon Dabat work perfectly well with 3rd party apps like the ZONITH app. The cellular network worked perfectly everywhere on all of the PoC devices.
The evolution of the traditional radios to those which are cellular, and android based seems logical since cellular technology becomes more and more advanced. Overall, it follows the smartphones, adding better batteries, cameras and finally – software. Cutting the costs seems a great overall addition, and lesser maintenance costs make the investment preferable.
The major manufacturers of PoC devices all provide Push-to-talk (PTT) services as a cloud-based subscription service. ZONITH’s alarm handling and lone-worker protection service www.2SafeYOU.com also provide a high-availability cloud-based subscription service in line with the PTT cloud services. Using the cloud-based infrastructure and subscription services is a major benefit to the customers as they can concentrate on their business operations and avoid time-consuming and expensive maintenance of their radio network.
