Think of it as the Internet on the run. The new generation of digital wireless telephones allows users to tap into the World Wide Web from just about anywhere. Buy a book at Amazon.com or buy some shares of Amazon.com at Ameritrade–all from a wireless telephone not much bigger or heavier than a pack of cigarettes.
“You don’t have to be tethered to a desk anymore to do these things,” Sprint PCS Group Spokesman Rick Pearl said.
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Internet-capable wireless phones can best access sites specifically designed for their small, text-only screens. But such sites now number in the hundreds and counting and include many of the most popular sites such as Yahoo! and ABC News. The service also allows users to send and receive e-mail via their wireless telephones.
Sprint PCS rolled out its Wireless Web service in September. Bell Atlantic Mobile jumped into the arena in November with its Web Access service. AT&T Wireless Services also has joined the field with its Pocket Net offering, and Nextel Communications is expected to follow soon.
The Sprint and Bell Atlantic wireless services allow customers to access the Internet straight from the telephone or by using the mobile telephone as a modem for a lap top computer. A cable connects the wireless telephone to a port on the back of the computer.
“Now, you have full Web access,” said Frank Antonacci, regional director of product development of Bell Atlantic Mobile. “It’s like plugging into a phone jack. It works the same way.”
The basic Qualcomm wireless telephone used by Bell Atlantic Mobile costs $119 and comes stocked with menu links to a handful of Internet sites such as ABC News, Bloomberg and ESPN SportsZone. Customers can manually add bookmarks to the growing number of sites that can be accessed by wireless telephones.
“We can’t even keep up with them all,” Antonacci said.
Sprint’s Pearl said he could count the number of sites available for wireless Internet customers on two hands in August, but that number has swollen to more than 100 today.
Sprint offers several Internet-capable wireless telephones for $99. The company currently charges 35 cents for each minute of Internet use or $10 for 50 minutes of Internet time. Sprint plans to cut the cost of wireless Internet access and simplify its rate plans sometime next month, Pearl said.
Bell Atlantic Mobile charges a $10 fee for wireless Internet access. The time customers spend surfing the net or reading e-mails carries the same per-minute charges as making a telephone call.
The Sprint service can be accessed locally in the greater Providence area, in and around most of the larger cities in Rhode Island and along major highways here. The company is continuing to add to its coverage area in Rhode Island, Pearl said.
Antonacci said more than 90 percent of Rhode Island is covered by Bell Atlantic’s digital wireless service, including its Web Access service. AT&T Wireless Services officials didn’t return calls by press time.
Bell Atlantic and Sprint aren’t disclosing the number of customers that have signed up for wireless Internet access, but both companies say the service is selling well.
“It has exceeded our expectations,” said Antonacci, who expects wireless Internet access to do well among business people that travel often and other niche markets. But he is critical of Sprint’s television and radio advertising blitz targeted at the mass consumer market.
“Some other companies–and I think you can figure out who they are–have put millions and millions of dollars into advertising this and are hoping that the mass consumer will come and by Internet access. It’s not for everybody.”
Sprint’s Pearl isn’t ready to concede that point.
“We just knew business people would see the utility of this phone,” he said. “The big question was: Would it catch on with consumers? I’d have to say that early results are, yeah, consumers are seeing that the information out there is very useful for them.”
A recent research report issued by IGI Consulting of Boston predicts the number of mobile devices accessing the Internet will grow to 600 million in 2003 and then to 830 million in 2005. And Bell Atlantic Mobile figures that 5 percent of all calls placed on its network by the end of the year will convey data rather than voices. Antonacci expects that number to shoot to 15 percent by 2003 and to 25 percent by 2005.
One of the new converts to wireless Internet was Pearl’s 68-year-old mother, who made her first-ever foray onto the Internet last year via a wireless telephone.
Pearl brought one of the demonstration phones home to his mother in August.
“I said, ‘Click that button. You’re on the Internet now.’ She said, ‘No, I can’t be,'” Pearl recalled.
Today Pearl’s mother surfs the net from her wireless telephone often, he said.
Now it just remains to be seen how many Americas will join her on the cutting edge of wireless technology in the next few years.
