NEW ORLEANS-BellSouth Cellular Corp. announced it will begin a Wireless Application Protocol trial with customers in some of its Global System for Mobile communications markets next month in a partnership with Saraide.com and InfoSpace.com.
Several hundred BellSouth customers in Raleigh, N.C., and Greenville, S.C., will use WAP-enabled handsets from Motorola Inc. and Nokia Mobile Phones to access a variety of services via a local BellSouth Buzz Internet portal. Services include e-mail, news, weather, sports scores, traffic reports, stock quotes and scheduling/calendar management.
Saraide.com, which formed earlier this year to provide Internet-based services to wireless devices, will offer a package of travel-related services called Traveler Service, a mobile travel assistant designed to provide business travelers with mobile real-time access to travel information such as flight updates, airline schedules and personalized notification of flight delays.
“In the end, the differentiating factor for data will be the ability to provide information that is useful,” said Carlton Hill, director of product development with BellSouth. “Folks get a lot of information, and they get it for free. We have to differentiate to justify the investment.”
If trials go well, BellSouth said it plans to introduce commercial WAP-based services by early next year in its GSM markets. Service will follow in the company’s Time Division Multiple Access markets via two-way short messaging service and circuit-switched data service, said Hill.
BellSouth already offers circuit-switched data service via modems in its GSM markets. The service has been moderately successful, said Hill.
“We’re still dealing with a vertical market,” she said. “We’re just now getting into the mass market. There are a lot of services that will be accessed through WAP that will make modem services unnecessary.”
