Mark, I thought you might enjoy this article...
zdnet.com
Inter@ctive Week August 27, 1997
Telephones Call On The Web
By Paula Bernier
1:30 PM EDT
Two recent developments indicate that telephones with the ability to access the World Wide Web will soon become widely available.
The Universal Wireless Communications Consortium, an industry group backing the Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) digital wireless technology, on September 11 will announce a microbrowser for TDMA phones, Mike Buhrmann, acting president of the UWCC, told Inter@ctive Week.
The microbrowser will require less memory than standard browsers, so it can reside on wireless TDMA phones. The microbrowser was developed with the input of multiple vendors and carriers, Buhrmann said.
"We want to ensure there is a wireless microbrowser that finds its way into all the phones," he said.
Meanwhile, Alcatel, Northern Telecom Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. announced that they intend to incorporate Sun Microsystems Inc.'s PersonalJava into the Web-enabled phones they manufacture. PersonalJava is a Java platform for consumer devices.
PersonalJava enables Web phones to connect to and download content from any network, including the Internet. It also allows Java developers to create applets and applications that can run on any common consumer device connected to a network, including any Java-enabled Web phone, set-top box, personal digital assistant or mobile phone.
The three companies each displayed models of their PersonalJava-enabled Web phones at the Java Internet Business Expo in New York this week. The companies each plan to announce shipment of the devices by mid-1998.
"PersonalJava is exactly what we need for this new class of Web appliance, the Web phone," said Al Delorenzi, vice president of technology and business development at Nortel. "It is allowing Nortel, together with our European partner Matra Communication, to build a cost-effective Web phone product line while maintaining compatibility with the Java-enabled enterprise desktop."
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I agree the phone companies are going to be seeing red.
Michael |
