What is PTT Over Cellular Radio
Conventional radio systems normally have one or more radio channels assigned to them to operate on. these channels are often assigned by government bodies to each user, and a licence fee is often charged. Range of these conventional system is often limited to a few Km or tens of Km unless expensive infrastructure is installed with multiple radio sites and high equipment costs.
Although there is still a place for these conventional radio system, The new PTT over cellular technology can offer a real alternative to conventional radio with virtually no limit to range and very low hardware and running costs.
PTT over cellular stands for (Press to talk over cellular) sometimes abbreviated to PoC or referred to as Network radio. these radio units often look the same as a conventional radio but utilise the GSM mobile phone network as a relay station to relay calls a few meters, up to hundreds even thousands of Km.
A Poc handset or Car mount radio is effectively a mobile phone, Devices come in many form, but essentially they have a SIM card inside and connect to one of the Mobile network operators to provide the service. For a POC device to work it must have 3 things.
1) A GSM ideally 3 G or 4 G mobile phone network
2) A sim card to send data over that network or multi network SIM card
3) a POC server that relays the calls.