Blog · Operations · June 16, 2026 · 6 min read
Push-to-talk over cellular, explained in plain language
PoC turns any smartphone into a radio with unlimited range. Here's how it works, what it costs, and why operations are migrating — without the acronyms doing the talking.
Push-to-talk over cellular — PoC — is the simplest important idea in workplace communication: take the one-press, everyone-hears immediacy of a two-way radio, and carry it over the mobile networks that already blanket the planet instead of radio frequencies you must license and equip.
That single swap changes the economics. Coverage stops being something you build (towers, repeaters, leaky feeders) and becomes something you already bought with every SIM card. Range stops being a radius and becomes a map of everywhere your carrier — or a satellite — reaches.
What actually happens when you press
The app asks the server for the floor — permission to speak — and gets it back in tens of milliseconds. Your voice is encoded, encrypted end-to-end, and streamed to everyone on the channel, whether they're across the yard or across an ocean. On a clean 5G cell it sounds like FM; on a weak rural 2G cell the codec trades polish for resilience so the message still lands. Press-to-heard stays under a second either way.
Because the channel is software, everything radio wished it could do comes along free: live GPS on every transmission, recordings you can search, transcription in real time, and an SOS that carries your position to the people who need it.
What it costs and how it starts
PoC is priced like software, not infrastructure: a few dollars per user per month — ENLIL publishes $2.5 to $5 depending on plan — with nothing to install beyond an app. Deployment is genuinely plug-in play: create channels, invite users by link, and the first cross-site call happens the same afternoon.
The organizations that migrate well treat it as an operations project, not an IT one: pilot where radio fails, keep the accessories crews trust, and let the dead zones make the argument.
Written by the ENLIL Dynamics team — engineers and operators building frontline communication since 2003.