I disagree here. The iPhone already supports this functionality for VoIP applications: they maintain a persistent TCP connection in the background and when you

I disagree here. The iPhone already supports this functionality for VoIP applications: they maintain a persistent TCP connection in the background and when you get a call the app is activated again. The way email push works (IMAP IDLE) is the same: the client opens a TCP connection to the server which remains idle and the server 'pushes' data over that connection. I think it's reasonable to ask for the same functionality for a different purpose.