Sprint Nextel today announced an agreement to use QUALCOMM's QChat solution. Sprint expects to utilize QChat technology to extend high performance push-to-talk services to customers on the Nationwide Sprint PCS Network, as well as provide interoperable push-to-talk services between users on both networks.

Developed by QUALCOMM, QChat delivers advanced walkie-talkie services optimized for CDMA2000 1xEV-DO Revision A wireless networks, as well as interoperability with the Nextel National Network. Featuring a call set-up latency of less than one second between handsets, QChat is expected to offer exceptional call set-up performance and bandwidth savings in comparison to other walkie-talkie approaches.

Sprint expects to begin offering high performance push-to-talk services using QChat in early 2008. Sprint, Lucent and QUALCOMM recently completed successful trials using pre-production handsets, commercial-grade lab systems and EV-DO Revision A field sites.

Commercial availability of the high performance push-to-talk service will follow Sprint's upgrade of its Power Vision Network to the faster EV-DO Revision A technology being rolled out later this year. In addition to enabling high-performance push-to-talk services, the upgraded mobile broadband network will enable richer applications and services such as high-speed video telephony, music on demand, video messaging and large file uploads. The Power Vision Network is the nation's largest mobile broadband network and is expected to be completely upgraded by 3Q 2007.