Spotcast Communications Inc., Silver Spring, Md., is billing itself as the world’s first provider of localized, advertisement-sponsored mobile communications.
The company recently completed a beta test with its first carrier customer, Peoples Telephone Co.. The Hong Kong-based Global System for Mobile communications 1800 provider has begun a full-scale commercial launch of the service.
Peoples had a total of 223,000 subscribers at the end of April. By Aug. 15, it expected to have signed up at least 15,000 wireless customers to hear sales messages from more than 50 companies in exchange for phone service price discounts.
Spotcast, whose chairman is Russell McFall, formerly president of Lockheed Martin Telecommunications, said it has had preliminary discussions with several mobile wireless phone companies in the United States. It expects to launch its service in the United States next year.
The offering allows wireless end users a reduction of 60 percent to 100 percent on their phone bills if they are willing to listen to a 10-second commercial before each call they place is completed. Spotcast inserts the audio commercials onto the frequencies allotted to the telecommunications carrier.
If wireless subscribers are interested in a specific product or service advertised, they can opt to be switched directly to telemarketers who can answer their questions and take their orders.
Records of all calls subscribers make to advertisers are retained on a secure Web site. Advertisers will use this data to monitor the number of customers who heard their sales message and who then asked to be connected to a telemarketer or requested additional information about a product or service.
Advertisers can adjust delivery of their messages by using Spotcast’s Internet site. The site also allows advertisers to target their marketing to individuals, based on the `personal buying profiles’ wireless end users participating in the Spotcast program must complete in order to qualify for discounts on phone service.
