Meanwhile, our competitors forge ahead.
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Source: Wireless Week (it's a search URL and not sure
I can copy it).
By Brad Smith
Wildfire, the electronic personal assistant with a friendly woman's voice, found a home with a U.S. wireless carrier this week as
Pacific Bell Wireless Inc. started marketing the service in the seven-county Los Angeles area.
The launch represents a milestone for Wildfire Communications Inc. of Lexington, Mass., and the fruition of three years work with
the California carrier. PacBell Wireless is the first U.S. carrier to use the service, although Canada's Bell Mobility became the first
in North America Sept. 16.
The company hopes the service will now spread like wildfire among other carriers. Louisiana-based CenturyTel is expected to
offer the service in early 1999, followed by Orange Personal Communications Ltd. of Great Britain.
Voice-activated personal assistants have been spreading in 1998. Similar services include General Magic Inc.'s "Portico" and
Webley Systems Inc.'s "Webley." Lucent Technologies Inc. also has said it will have a scaled-down personal assistant soon.
Although they differ in how they operate, the personal assistants all provide many of the same functions--answering calls with a
human voice, taking messages, forwarding calls to another location, voice-activated calling and keeping an extensive phone book.
Wildfire is unusual because the service is part of the network, rather than being an outside operations center.
Leslie Anderson, the corporate communications director for Wildfire, said the announcement by PacBell Wireless was crucial for
the service because the carrier "carries a lot of weight in the eyes of other carriers and the press." Part of that weight comes from
PacBell's parent SBC Communications Inc.
"PacBell is who the world was waiting for," Anderson said, alluding to industry talk about the relationship. "It feels very good to be
with PacBell. Maybe it will ignite other carriers."
Stephen Krom, marketing vice president for PacBell Wireless, said it took three years of joint development with Wildfire to launch
the product because the carrier wanted to be certain it was exactly right for its customers. A key to the service was making it an
integral part of the network, he said.
After trialing Wildfire with about 400 external customers in San Diego this year, PacBell was convinced it was ready.
"What we saw was overwhelmingly positive," Krom said of the trial. He said the test customers were uniformly pleased with the
service's ease of use, including the friendly way Wildfire's "voice" responds.
PacBell Wireless initially is targeting middle-to-high-end customers because they would be the most likely to need and adopt the
service, he said. Wildfire is offered as a $20 premium to four usage plans.
The lowest-cost option includes Wildfire, 300 anytime minutes and 1,000 weekend minutes for $69.95 a month. On the high end
are 1,200 anytime minutes and 1,000 weekend minutes for $149.95.
Krom said PacBell expects to offer Wildfire to low-use subscribers and will roll it out elsewhere in California and Nevada. SBC is
studying the service for its coverage area too, he said.
Wildfire probably will get a lot of use in vehicles, Krom said, since drivers in the Los Angeles area have the nation's longest
commutes. The service allows complete hands-free use of a wireless phone in a car, he said.
Krom declined to discuss specific internal expectations for use of the service but said PacBell intended to promote it heavily and
believes it will have wide acceptance.
Wildfire resides on servers in PacBell's network--a ProLiant computer from Compaq Computer Corp. Mimi Reilly, director of
North American communications industry marketing for Compaq, said this is the first time an industry standard ProLiant server
was hooked into a carrier's call pathway.
The standard ProLiant server makes it more cost-effective for carriers, Reilly said.
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