Excite@Home and AT&T Announce Launch of Excite Mobile on New AT&T PocketNet Service
Thursday, May 18, 2000 12:47 PM
Companies Announce Joint Distribution Deal to Co-Market Products
REDWOOD CITY, Calif., May 18 /PRNewswire/ -- Excite@Home (Nasdaq: ATHM, news, msgs) and AT&T Wireless (NYSE: AWE, news, msgs) today announced the launch of Excite Mobile, Excite's portal for mobile users, on the new AT&T Digital PocketNet(SM) service. Excite Mobile is the only branded portal on the PocketNet Service's mobile homepage as well as the first portal to distribute its full service on the carrier. AT&T's wireless packet data network is unique in that users pay a low, monthly flat rate for unlimited Internet access, removing a significant barrier to mobile Web use.
(Photo: newscom.com )
Excite@Home and AT&T Wireless also announced today a joint distribution deal to co-market the mobile services of each company. AT&T Wireless will include Excite Mobile on its $14.99-per-month unlimited-access service, and Excite will market AT&T wireless services through the Excite Mobile portal at mobile.excite.com, where users can purchase the AT&T Digital PocketNet service or cell phones with the service. An extension of Excite@Home's broadband online service strategy, Excite Mobile provides mobile Web users with their customized portfolio of news, directions, weather and other personal and location-based information to deliver relevant information directly to users. With AT&T's packet data network, users will no longer pay by the minute to, for example, compose e-mail, manage calendar information or access driving directions.
"Through this relationship, we are providing AT&T wireless subscribers with the next generation of wireless Web services: a cost-effective service that anticipates users' needs and presents them with a personalized experience that represents their interests," said Rob Wilen, senior director and group manager for Wireless at Excite@Home. "The Excite Mobile and PocketNet services work together to eliminate the barriers of complexity and cost to wireless Web access."
"We are pleased to have the Excite Mobile portal as part of AT&T Digital PocketNet service," said Kendra VanderMeulen, senior vice president of Product Development and Strategy at AT&T Wireless Services. "What's different is that where users once paid $15 per month for a limited number of minutes, they now have an unlimited number of minutes plus a personalized, relevant mobile environment."
For $14.99 per month, AT&T Digital PocketNet subscribers have access to Excite Mobile's full suite of services and have the option to select Excite Mobile as the home page on their cell phone browsers. Alternatively, consumers can subscribe to a "Plus" service for $6.99 per month that provides a subset of services, such as Web content, e-commerce sites and Excite Inbox e-mail. The AT&T Digital PocketNet service is available on the new Ericsson R280LX and the Mitsubishi MobileAccess T-250 phones.
Excite Mobile features the first customizable mobile home page in the United States, so users can access their favorite items faster by moving them to the top of the menu or by removing menu items they don't use.
Users of Excite Mobile can take advantage of:
1) Excite Inbox: Users can read, write, file and delete messages using
their Excite Inbox e-mail account and create messages from their
address book in Excite Planner.
2) Excite Planner: includes a user's address book, calendar, to-do list
and notepad.
3) Phonebooks: Users can access location-based Yellow Pages, including
searches by category, such as coffee or gas stations, and searches by
specific business name to locate a nearby store or office. Also
included are People Finder (White Pages), an ATM Finder and a reverse
lookup function where a user can enter a phone number to retrieve a
name and address.
4) Entertainment: includes location-based movie listings, new releases in
theaters, on video and on DVD, top box office movies, horoscopes,
lottery results and fortune cookies.
5) Money: includes "My Portfolio," stock quotes and stock and market
news.
6) News: includes the user's personal "My News" topics, plus top stories,
technology news and business, sports and "oddly enough" news.
7) Weather: Individuals can access "My Weather" and find weather by zip
code, city and state. Weather can also be viewed by "My Places," which
saves and delivers weather according to a user's most-frequented or
favorite locations.
8) Sports: includes "My Sports," baseball, golf, hockey, college and pro
basketball, motor racing, soccer and tennis scores and results.
9) Directions: Individuals can pull up locations by address or through My
Places to access commonly used locations to use as start or end points.
"Personalization is the key element that increases value to mobile users by putting the information that's germane to them at their fingertips -- it changes the wireless Web experience to be convenient and simple," Wilen said. "Personalization is one of our core competencies and our focus for the mobile portal, which is critical to the mobile experience given the limited screen space, limited bandwidth and online rates on mobile Web devices."
The Yankee Group anticipates 1 billion mobile devices worldwide by 2003, and IDC projects as many as 40 million mobile devices will be used for Internet access in the United States. Lehman Brothers has raised its estimate of wireless-data penetration from 25 percent of voice subscribers to 50 percent by 2007. Thirty percent of mobile phones shipped this year in the United States are expected to have a browser and 80 percent of the mobile phones will in two years, according to Yankee and Strategy Analytics, respectively.
Excite Mobile's location-based services -- including yellow pages and white pages, driving directions, and ATM sites -- are provided by AirFlash, Inc., the first application service provider of location content and commerce infrastructure designed exclusively for the mobile medium.
About Excite@Home
Excite@Home is the leading broadband online service provider, offering residential and commercial broadband services across a global footprint of 87 million homes under long-term cable and DSL contract. Excite@Home offers consumers broadband services over cable-modem, DSL and other "last-mile" connections and businesses high-speed commercial services. Excite@Home has approximately 13.5 million cable franchise homes under contract outside of North America and localized versions of the Excite service in 10 leading international markets.
About AT&T Wireless
The AT&T Wireless Group is among the world's premier wireless voice, data and fixed wireless communications companies, serving more than 12.5 million customers, including consumers, businesses, and government. With annual revenues of more than $7 billion and 18,000 employees, AT&T Wireless Group provides services to customers across the globe. Backed by the research and development capabilities of AT&T Labs, the company has one of the largest digital wireless networks in North America. The company's AT&T Digital One Rates(SM) offer revolutionized the industry by introducing a national wireless plan with no roaming or long distance charges across the US. AT&T Wireless Group was also the first company to provide wireless access to the Internet with AT&T PocketNet(R) Service and the first company to commercially offer fixed wireless service to residential customers through its AT&T Digital Broadband Service.
SOURCE Excite@Home
CONTACT: Karen Snow of Excite@Home, 650-556-3940, or ksnow@excitehome.net
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Only two companies providing Excite content on their phones. I don't think AOL or anyone else has this broad range of options available for cell phones. The trouble is that trading via the phone or checking stock quotes does not seem to integrated with the 14.99 monthly fee. Content market seems to be working with Palm when the future probably will be just the phone for a user, not a Palm/clone and a phone. Have to dig a little more on this aspect.
Jack |
