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Technology Stocks : IFLY - travel sales on the web pure play -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: John Martin who wrote (4549)	3/22/1999 10:55:00 AM
From: IFLYer	Respond to of 4761

Wireless phone to book air flight plans on the run By Eric Auchard NEW YORK, March 18 (Reuters) - Travelers can be notified of flight changes and switch air reservations at a moments notice, anywhere in the world, with a first-of-its-kind wireless Internet phone system to be unveiled Thursday. The wireless travel reservation service -- now in development by International Business Machines Corp. , Nokia and SABRE Group -- is expected to be offered by SABRE as early as the end of 1999. Nokia and IBM will detail their roles in the travel project at separate press conferences to be held Thursday at the CeBIT computer trade fair underway in Hanover, Germany this week. A traveler using the wireless reservation system could make new travel arrangements as plans change -- in an office, a hotel, or the back of a taxi on the way to an airport -- using a new generation of Nokia "smartphones." The system combines the corporate travel purchasing system of SABRE, electronic-business technology from IBM, the world's largest computer maker, and new data-handling wireless phones from Nokia, the Finnish telecommunications equipment giant. "We continuously work to incorporate new technologies into SABRE...that provide business travelers more convenient access to their travel information," Sam Gilliland, general manager of SABRE's Business Travel Solutions unit, said in a statement. "Wherever the business traveler goes, SABRE BTS will be there to serve them," Gilliland said, referring to his company -- the world's leading airline reservation system -- by its initials. When the SABRE system determines a scheduled flight has been delayed or canceled, a message would be sent to the traveler via the Nokia mobile phone. Testing among a select group of corporate users begins in the second quarter. The wireless reservation system marks one of the first wide-scale uses of pervasive computing, an emerging set of technologies that allows users to stay connected to the Internet at all times. IBM officials said they see the system as a key step toward winning general acceptance for an emerging class of wireless computing systems that deliver online stock quotes, banking services, or corporate data to business travelers. SABRE is developing the software that delivers travel information and provides the means to create and change travel bookings. The software also allows a business traveler to check corporate travel policy and to track expenses, the Ft. Worth, Texas company said. IBM, which brokered the three-way deal, is providing the software in the middle of the system to translate information from the SABRE system into a highly condensed form that can be sent to a mobile phone -- a process called transcoding. IBM's computer services division will provide project management, design and programming skills for the overall project. Nokia is providing the central computer system through which information is sent over a wireless network, and the latest Nokia phone technology to receive it. It has created a "microbrowser" that displays information on a phone screen. But one industry analyst who has followed the program said a trick that needs to be worked out is how to squish travel information into a format that is readable on a small cell phone screen. "The concept is correct, although putting that much detail into a handheld cellular is going to be very difficult," said Frank Dzubeck, an industry consultant with Communications Network Architects in Washington D.C. But Dzubeck said the Internet-based wireless phone system should help pave the way for similar systems that run over a range of converging devices that will soon include wireless phone links -- like laptop computers and handheld Palm Pilots. Still, the travel reservation system fulfills IBM Chairman Lou Gerstner's vision of pervasive computing set forth at last year's CeBIT, Europe's largest computer show. The goal has become a major theme of the IBM business strategy. Over the past year, IBM has set out to seed the market for pervasive computing by developing wireless computer chips, embedded software and micro-sized computer hard drives for a new generation of wireless handheld devices. The Armonk, N.Y.-based computer maker has also led efforts to open-up industry technology standards and has put its huge computer services unit to work setting up systems. ((-- Eric Auchard, New York newsdesk, 212-859-1840))