IP: Pocketnet [Well we will see.. I will try to get one and

[David Farber <farber@cis.upenn.edu>]

Full @ http://www.nytimes.com/library/cyber/week/100697pocketnet.html


AT&T Cellular Phone Service to Allow Links to Internet
By JOHN MARKOFF


AT&T's Wireless Services Division plans to announce Monday the retail
introduction of a service that permits a cellular phone user to tap into a
variety of information sources and electronic mail via the Internet. 


The new service, called Pocketnet, will cost a flat monthly fee of $29.95
in addition to regular telephone charges. It has been available for more
than a year to corporate users, but now AT&T will compete with a range of
other providers of cellular and other wireless services to offer retail
customers untethered access to the Internet. 


,...


Alan Reiter, editor of Wireless Internet and Mobile Computing, an industry
newsletter, said there were a host of barriers facing companies trying to
build wireless data businesses, ranging from having many incompatible data
networks around the country to the small screen in the new cellular
handsets, which permit a user to see only three lines of data at a time. 


At least one of the original industry pioneers, Geoff Goodfellow, who
founded Radiomail but left the company last year, says that the need for
such consumer-oriented data delivery schemes has been overblown. 


"A lot of this is foo foo and la la," Goodfellow said. "These visions only
make sense within the Silicon Valley 408 and 415 area code space time
continuum differential shift."










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"Photons have neither morals or visas"  --  Dave Farber 1996
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