Details of the BT Internet Deals:British Telecom in Internet Venture
AP Online, Thursday, March 09, 2000 at 10:09
LONDON (AP) - British Telecommunications PLC has formed joint ventures with Microsoft Corp. and other leading high-tech companies to develop a global network of mobile phones with Internet applications.
Hoping to profit from explosive growth in wireless telephone service and the worldwide Web, BT said Thursday that it aims to enable customers to use mobile handsets to receive news and information and to pay credit card bills, trade shares, listen to music or buy airline tickets.
Microsoft, based in Redmond, Wash., will supply the mobile Internet applications. Phone.com Inc. of Redwood City, Calif., will provide the portal software, BT said.
Motorola Corp. of Schaumburg, Ill., will build the handsets with Internet compatibility, as will Sweden's LM Ericsson AB, Siemens AG of Germany and NEC Corp. of Japan.
BT plans to invest $253 million in the projects. It aims to launch global mobile Internet services in the summer, with trials beginning in April.
The number of mobile subscribers around the world is expected to increase by 200 percent in the next five years to more than a billion, said Kent Thexton, who will be managing director for BT's new global mobile Internet business.
BT's Internet sales are growing at more than 80 percent per year, and the company forecasts that the mobile e-commerce market will be worth $200 billion in four years.
BT also announced that its mobile phone business, BT Cellnet, is launching Britain's first prepaid mobile Internet phone based on wireless application protocol technology, which makes it possible to send large amounts of data, including video images, over radio waves to small receivers.
BT Cellnet expects to sell up to 500,000 phones using that
technology between April and June. It predicts that, within 18 months, almost all new mobile phones will be compatible with Internet services. |
