British Telecom plc unveiled its mobile Internet strategy last week, setting up a new unit to offer global mobile Internet services by extending its existing Genie Internet services to Wireless Application Protocol-enabled phones.
BT said it will invest $250 million in WAP technology and form partnerships with 30 companies and content providers worldwide in support of the service.
Phone.com Inc. is supplying its MyPhone portal software, UP.Link Server Suite WAP gateway and other applications. Logica plc will be the WAP provider for Genie, as well as share systems integration responsibilities with Syncordia. Microsoft Corp. was chosen to provide additional mobile Internet applications. The carrier signed a wide range of agreements for content services and tapped Looksmart to provide the content aggregation.
BT chose a number of phone manufacturers to provide WAP handsets, including Sharp, Panasonic, Motorola Inc., L.M. Ericsson, Seimens, Nokia Corp. and NEC Corp. Analysts said the relative shortage of available WAP handsets has made partnering with a variety of manufacturers necessary to take wireless Internet services to a larger audience.
Kent Thexton, formerly marketing director of BT Cellnet, the company’s mobile phone unit, was named managing director of the new mobile Internet unit.
Coinciding with the mass-market mobile Internet launch, Cellnet made several announcements independently to support the effort. It unveiled a pre-pay WAP phone to be available April 3. Mobile Internet calls will be charged a flat, per-minute rate at a third of the cost of peak time voice calls, while off-peak voice calls will cost less. Each phone comes with up to 200 minutes of free weekend Internet or voice calls.
Sounding extremely bullish on mobile Internet possibilities, Cellnet said it expects to sell 500,000 WAP phones between April and June. Going further, the company expects most of the phones it sells will be Internet-enabled in 18 months, to the point where 85 percent of all mobile handsets in the United Kingdom will have Internet connectivity in three years.
“This is a landmark announcement for us and marks two points of transition as BT Cellnet turns from a mobile phone company into a mobile Internet company,” said Peter Erskine, BT Cellnet managing director in a statement.
In addition to the pre-pay WAP phones, Cellnet restructured its pricing for post-pay packages of 100, 200 and 400 minute plans combining both voice and Internet minutes. Voice-only call plans will remain, the company said.
Cellnet claims 7 million customers, with 600,000 subscribing to the Genie Internet service. Parent company BT, meanwhile, boasts a total of 35 million subscribers worldwide, making it a significant deployment for BT’s partners in the venture.
“It’s a very big deal, given the number of international properties they have, as well as their 35 million subscribers,” said Ben Linder, Phone.com vice president of marketing. He said the agreement marks the first commercial use of the company’s MyPhone portal software outside the United States.
BT’s stock jumped 20 percent following the announcement, as analysts strongly approved the aggressive nature of the mobile Internet announcement, noting that BT is often more of a passive follower.
