Patent ID: 8855697

Claim:
A method for establishing a push-to-talk communication link between a first push-to-talk device and a second push-to-talk device, comprising: transmitting data of different types between the first push-to-talk device and the second push-to-talk device; transmitting a push-to-talk link request, from the first push-to-talk device, for a mutual transmission of different types of data to the second push-to-talk device; and establishing a communication link for at least a selection of the different types of data via a communication channel according to a communication protocol, wherein the push-to-talk link request includes an item of priority information which is used to allocate a transmission priority to the different types of data to be transmitted via the communication channel, and in response to the push-to-talk link request from the first push-to-talk device, the communication protocol allows a communication channel to be established with the second push-to-talk device only when the second push-to-talk device is available for type or types of data having a highest transmission priority and allows a type of data having a lower transmission priority to be transmitted via the communication channel only when the second push-to-talk device is available for the type of data having the lower transmission priority and the second push-to-talk device is available for all types of data having a higher transmission priority than the lower transmission priority; wherein the types of data having the higher transmission priority include a plurality of types of data.