Push-to-talk, answered plainly
The questions people actually ask before they choose a dispatch platform. No marketing answers — where the honest answer is "no" or "it depends on your network", that is what it says.
Push-to-talk basics
Push-to-talk is one-way-at-a-time group voice: you hold a button, you speak, everyone on the channel hears you live, then you release and someone else can talk. It is how professional radio has always worked, and the reason it survives is that it is instant and it reaches a whole team at once — no ringing, no answering, no meeting to join.
Your voice is digitised on the phone, sent over the mobile data connection to a server, and forwarded to everyone on the channel while you are still talking. It travels as data, so it works anywhere the phone has coverage — 4G, 5G, or Wi-Fi — and it is not limited by the range of a radio transmitter.
They are the same thing: push-to-talk carried over a mobile network instead of a radio network. PoC stands for Push-to-talk Over Cellular. A "PoC radio" is a handset that looks and feels like a two-way radio but is actually an Android device using the mobile network.
It behaves the same and it is not the same technology. A two-way radio transmits directly on a licensed radio frequency and keeps working with no network at all. Push-to-talk over cellular depends on mobile coverage but has no range limit and no frequency licence. Respondr exists because most organisations need both, on the same channel.
Yes, and it grew. The carrier services that made it famous were switched off, but the function moved to apps and to IP dispatch platforms. Emergency services, ports, airports, utilities and logistics operators all still run on it every day.
A dispatch console is the operator position that sees and controls every channel at once: who is transmitting, which teams are on which channel, where the field units are, and a recording of what was said. In Respondr it runs in a browser, on a desktop client, or on dedicated console hardware.
Radio networks and gateways
A radio gateway is a box that connects an existing radio network to an IP network, translating audio and signalling in both directions. RoIP — Radio over IP — is the general name for carrying radio traffic that way. It is what lets someone on a smartphone talk to someone on a handheld radio, on the same channel, with neither of them needing to know.
Analog VHF and UHF over a 4-wire E&M interface — including aeronautical and marine VHF — plus DMR Tier I, II and III, TETRA, and NEXEDGE. Connection is made through radio gateways from FunkTronic, RadioActivity, Kenwood and Radio Data, depending on the network.
That is the point of the product. The radios stay in the field on the network they already use; the gateway bridges that network into Respondr, and the dispatcher, the phones and the radios end up on shared channels. Nothing has to be replaced to start.
Interoperability is getting teams on different radio systems to hear each other. A fire brigade on DMR, a police unit on TETRA and a contractor on analog VHF normally cannot. Bridged through gateways into one platform, they can be patched onto a shared channel for as long as the incident lasts.
The radio side keeps working. That is the real argument for a hybrid system: the radio network is independent infrastructure and does not depend on a mobile operator. In an on-premise deployment the dispatcher and the local gateways also keep running with no external connection at all.
No. A PoC radio uses the mobile network, so it needs a SIM and a data plan, not a radio frequency licence. The radio side of a hybrid system does still need whatever licence its frequencies require — that does not change.
Devices and accessories
Yes. With Respondr installed, an ordinary iPhone or Android phone becomes a channel radio — on screen, or with a Bluetooth button or a wired speaker-microphone if you need a real key to press.
Rugged models built for it: the Samsung Galaxy XCover range, RugGear RG880i and RG190, Inrico and Telox PoC radios, IRISIO S380, iSafe rugged phones and the Siyata SD7. Respondr binds the manufacturer’s own key on each. The full mapping is on the supported devices page.
Yes. The XCover key transmits and releases like a radio PTT, through the Samsung Knox hardware-key interface. On models with a dedicated emergency key, that key raises an SOS alert instead. No accessory is needed.
Yes, with their device sharing position. Respondr shows live GPS positions on a map, supports live location sharing for the duration of a task, and records signal-strength samples to build a radio coverage heatmap.
Yes. Respondr detects man-down from the phone’s own motion sensors, with a pre-alarm the user can cancel, and a dedicated SOS button raises an emergency alert to the dispatcher with the user’s position.
Deployment, security and data
Yes. The complete platform — core, database and recording — installs on your hardware inside your network, with the same features as the hosted version. Cloud and hybrid deployments are the other two options.
Wherever you deploy. On-premise it never leaves your building. In the cloud it stays in the AWS region you choose, which for European operators means the Europe (Milan) region, on encrypted volumes.
Channel audio can be recorded, searched and played back, and optional on-device transcription makes it searchable as text. Retention is a setting, not a fixed policy — keeping everything forever is a liability.
TLS 1.3 on every connection, multi-factor authentication, single sign-on through your own identity provider, permissions granted per channel and per gateway, account lockout after five failed sign-ins, and separate audit logs. The platform is engineered to IEC 62443 SL2 and aligned with NIS2 — a design posture, not a third-party certificate.
The console and the apps run in English, Italian, German, French, Spanish and Portuguese.
Getting started
It depends on the number of users, which radio networks you bridge and where it runs, so there is no list price on this page. Tell us the shape of your operation in a demo and you get a real number, not a range.
Yes. You can create a workspace and start with the apps straight away. Bridging your radio network needs a gateway, which is what the demo conversation is for.
The IP side — users, channels, apps — is same-day. The radio side depends on the gateway, the site and the network you are connecting to, which is why we would rather look at yours than quote a number here.
Yes. The platform exposes a REST API with API-key authentication for scripted integrations, and the mobile app publishes an open set of Android intents so third-party hardware and apps can drive push-to-talk, SOS and channel changes.
Question not here?
Ask it directly. A demo with us is a working session with engineers who have installed this on ports, motorways and airports — not a slide deck.
Schedule a demoSee Respondr on your networks.
A 30-minute live demo with your radio infrastructure in mind.