ROKTalk: Update

So it’s alive! Brilliant. ROKTalk isn’t, as I was concerned about (and to quote the irrepressible Michael Arrington) in ‘The Dead Pool’.

I got this in from Bruce at ROK just now.

ROK Talk is indeed a fabulous service delivering easy to use, low-cost, ad-hoc, multi-person calling.

We have learnt a great deal from the Beta trial and, while that continues, we have been busy marketing the concept to several selected mobile operators and handset manufacturers worldwide.

We plan to begin deployments of ROK Talk in the last 3 months of the year and expect ROK Talk to be operational with more than a dozen operators worldwide by the middle of next year.

The reaction of the operators and handset manufacturers has been incredibly enthusiastic. Everyone ‘gets it’ immediately – particularly when, in meetings, we call everyone in the room and all their mobiles ring at exactly the same time.

We have crafted a number of business models for the service based upon the individual requirements and deployment plans of the operators and manufacturers – from the bundling of the service for free for post-pay business users, to the deployment of a pre-pay service for pre-pay customers.

Interestingly, we are seeing ROK Talk being used, typically, to call an average of 4-5 people at a time and each call being for 4-5 minutes duration, on average.

I’m disappointed that they’re taking so long to roll out. It’s going to be another 12 months before anything is live?