One focus at RebelVox is tactical communications. And by that, we usually mean communications in support of tactical operations for public safety or defense. But we also work in the consumer space, and, in thinking through some of the scenarios, we have noticed that a tactical mode of communication can be required in any market. While we tend to think of consumer telephony as family conversations, “calling mom”, chatting with friends, the truth is that we need telecommunications for all kinds of daily tactical challenges.

One meaning of tactical is: “of or relating to small-scale actions serving a larger purpose.” And a tactical communication is some part of a larger task that one is trying to accomplish. And in every day life, we have such larger purposes: we need to coordinate a future social event with ten friends; we need to meet up in the city with 4 people all using various forms of mass transit; a flat tire requires us to reschedule all of this afternoon’s appointments.

A tactical voice communication has a few requirements:

• It has to go through to the right person (or maybe many persons).
• It may or may not need to be live, but it has to go as efficiently and quickly as possible.
• There is likely some response, coordination, or other information exchange required.
• It would be great if the recipient (or many recipients) could get back to me simply.
• It would be great if we didn’t do the irritating “pass you in the dark” voice mail exchange–again, imagine with many recipients.
• In the group situation, it would also be helpful it everyone saw everything automatically—like “reply all” for email.
• If you missed part of a conversation, you can always retrieve it and catch up on what’s going on.
• You never miss anything.

When was the last time you tried to plan a large party by making phone calls to everyone? No, you would use email, of course. But what if you wanted to do it while you are driving to LA? Sometimes voice is best.

So a good voice solution for these things would include:

• Live conversation if I and and any of my targets desires,
• Any live conversations are maintained for any non-live participants,
• Instant voice messages otherwise—to one or any number of participants,
• Responding is as simple as choosing and talking (or typing),
• All live talk and messages threaded into a conversation that keeps our context,
• Interleaved voice or text in the same conversation so everyone can use what’s most convenient at the moment,
• Ability to replay, retrieve, play faster, and if folks are talking live, catch up with the conversation and move into live with them,
• All seamlessly persistent in one system with one point of rendezvous.

Turns out that this kind of “tactical” solution is important in all markets. It makes it easier to see that a more sophisticated voice application could be really handy, and not just to the fireman and sheriff, but to all of us every day.