What is a PoC radio?
· Kelvin Oyugi, Technology & Telematics Expert · 2 min read
A PoC radio — push-to-talk over cellular — is a handset that behaves like a two-way radio but carries the voice over a mobile data network instead of transmitting directly to another handset.
It looks and works like a radio. You press a button, you talk, and everyone on the channel hears you immediately, without dialling anyone or waiting for them to answer. That instant, one-to-many behaviour is the reason radios never went away in operations where a phone call is the wrong tool.
What changes is what carries the voice. A conventional radio transmits to another radio, so the distance between the two is the limit and terrain and buildings interfere. A PoC radio sends the audio over the mobile network, so the distance between two users stops being the limit. A driver in Mombasa can talk to a dispatcher in Nairobi on the same channel.
What replaces distance as the limit is coverage. Communication with teams in other countries is possible, subject to network coverage and service availability. Where there is no mobile data service the handset cannot transmit or receive at all — which is the trade-off against a short-range radio, and the reason many fleets run both.
Range is bounded by network coverage, not by radio distance.
Two practical points usually decide the choice. PoC handsets need a data subscription, which is an ongoing cost a conventional radio does not have. And radio use in Kenya is licensed, so a radio deployment carries a licence renewal payable to the Communications Authority of Kenya. Both are stated on the product pages rather than discovered later.
Read more: Radio communication — PTT and PoC