SBC Wireless Inc. said it plans to roll out wireless Internet services by the fourth quarter and named InfoSpace Inc. as the underlying platform provider for the service. SBC carriers Ameritech Cellular, Pacific Bell Wireless, Nevada Bell Wireless, Cellular One and SNET all will offer the service, the company said. The InfoSpace platform will provide wireless messaging and e-mail capabilities, access to address book and calendar lists and personal and local information content. SBC also signed a multi-year agreement with Nokia Corp. calling for Nokia to supply, deploy and integrate its Artuse Messaging Platform and MAX platforms, as well as a range of wireless Internet services for SBC Wireless’ network.
Telenor Mobile Communications AS and Fast Search & Transfer ASA have partnered to jointly develop mobile Internet services. According to the three-year deal, the two will work together to develop search functions, positioning and multi-media solutions for mobile Internet portals.
Nokia Corp. signed an agreement to deliver its General Packet Radio Service Core network solution to Belgian mobile operator Mobistar, allowing Mobistar to provide mobile Internet access to its subscribers via its Global System for Mobile communications network. Nokia said a pre-commercial system already has been connected to the Mobistar network and was used during an exhibition in Brussels, Belgium, in early June.
NEC Corp. has agreed to resell Spyglass Inc.’s Prism content delivery and transformation platform in its Asian markets. Prism is a server-based solution that converts and transmits HTML-formatted Web content into forms that can be read by mobile devices.
Pumatech Inc. introduced a WAP solution designed to give WAP phones access to non-WAP Internet content otherwise unavailable to them. The solution is based on the Mind-it software featured on the company’s Mobile Application Platform server platform. Mind-it performs HTML-to-WML transformation. The MAP platform also includes Sync-it and Browse-it technologies for synchronization and support for various Internet markup languages.
