French first to use Internet on mobile phones
ReutersPlus, Tuesday, February 23, 1999 at 14:35
By Marcel Michelson
PARIS, Feb 23 (Reuters) - French mobile phone users will be
the first to access the Internet from their GSM phones in March
with equipment groups Nokia and Alcatel vying for the premiere.
Americans are used to sending and receiving electronic mail
on handheld appliances such as Palm Pilot by 3Com (NASDAQ:COMS), and
many people already surf the net from a laptop personal computer
using a mobile data connection.
British Telecom Plc (ISEL:BT) and Microsoft (SBF:MFST) are
working together to bridge the gap between computers and mobile
communications. Psion Plc (ISEL:PON), Ericsson (SWED:LME.B), Nokia and
Motorola (NYSE:MOT) are in the Symbian consortium to do the same.
But Alcatel (SBF:CGEP) and Nokia (HELS:NOKAV) are the first to
bring to market a GSM phone that dials up the net.
Or are they? Neither the Alcatel One-Touch-Pocket, already
widely available without Internet access, nor Nokia's 7110 model
allow users to surf the World Wide Web. But they are getting
close.
Using the WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) standard, GSM
phone owners will have access to some services available on the
net -- electronic mail, weather information, traffic information
and even electronic banking.
Nokia launched its 7110 at the World GSM Congress in Cannes
on Tuesday and said the phone would be available in volume in
the second quarter of 1999. It expects WAP phones to make up
10-15 percent of total GSM phone demand in 2000.
Nokia already had the Communicator, a palmtop computer and
mobile phone in one, but the 7110 is aimed at the mass market.
To be able to use the 7110, one needs to have a subscription
with an operator which uses WAP and has services available.
Alcatel has tested its offering with Cegetel and the latter
will launch a commercial service - Les Uns et Les Autres -- on
March 26.
Nokia has a deal with France Telecom (SBF:FTE), and the two
will test the product with a few consumers from April.
Operators need special servers, firewalls and software to be
able to offer the Internet services. Alcatel on Monday signed a
contract with Germany's T-Mobil (FSE:DTEG) to provide these
products as well ast its GPRS, General Packet Radio Service, for
electronic mail.
The services available on GSM phones are not real Internet
services with a WWW address. They are services provided by the
operator using the Internet Protocol.
Cable News Network (CNN), a unit of Time Warner Inc (NYSE:TWX),
said on Tuesday it was launching CNN Mobile in a venture with
Nokia, sending news messages to the mobile phone.
Reuters Group Plc (ISEL:RTR) last week launched the Wireless
Information Server product to deliver content from Reuters and
third-party sources via mobile phone operators.
Sweden's Ericsson said it was not worried about Nokia's new
phone. "The market is large today and new segments with new
possibilities are being created all the time," Jan Ahrenbring,
vice president of marketing and communications at Ericsson
Mobile Communications AB, told Reuters in Cannes.
In Cannes, chipcard makers De La Rue (ISEL:DLR) and
Hewlett-Packard's VeriFone will launch special GSM chip cards
that will permit secure banking operations via mobile phone.
Other features on show in Cannes are mobiles than can work
on two frequencies, 800 Mhz and 1900 Mhz, as operators try to
accomodate the explosion in GSM use ahead of the arrival of
next-generation mobile phones using the Universal Mobile
Telecommunications System (UMTS) standard expected by 2002.
-- With additional reporting by Salomon Bekele in Cannes and
Roland Moller in Helsinki
e-mail paris.newsroom@reuters.com))
Copyright 1999, Reuters News Service
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