The Anywhere Revolution

Your wireless-Web strategy today may predict your sales success tomorrow.

The fusion of wireless and Internet is redefining your business. Consumers want easy access to information at any time, from anywhere and via any device. Businesses want to expand their brands and content beyond the PC's confines. The next big opportunity for e-businesses, portals and wireless providers is the "anywhere" strategy: combining technology and marketing with distribution relationships to mobilize the Internet and expand your brand and content to new customers and devices.

IDC predicts that by the end of 2002, wireless subscribers with Internet access will outnumber wired-Internet users. Others predict that by 2002, 75% of Internet use will be via wireless. John Zeglis, AT&T Wireless Group chairman & CEO, calls wireless and the Internet "the two great revolutions of our time" that are fusing into a wonderfully robust medium. Putting its money where its mouth is, AT&T Wireless is providing its digital-voice-plan subscribers with unlimited Digital PocketNet service.

BellSouth Wireless will launch wireless Internet access in its GSM markets this summer and in its TDMA markets in 3Q00.

"For the first time in our business, we're selling a product that's no longer about how you get there but where you go," said Carlton Hill, BellSouth Wireless director of Internet initiatives.

Partner To Prosper
Tom Johnson, AnyDevice.com founder & CEO, said portals and e-businesses want to reach consumers when they're away from their PCs, and wireless is a perfect vehicle. Through partnerships, wireless providers can offer "sticky" features that reduce churn and create new revenue streams for their own businesses.

Enablers such as AnyDevice.com, Everypath and Air2Web partner with providers, portals and e-businesses to do the background translation necessary to bring Web content and applications to phones, pagers and PDAs. For example, AnyDevice.com facilitates a relationship between news portal ZDNet and AT&T Wireless.

"This represents a new distribution channel for ZDNet and the wireless provider," Johnson said. "They have access to branded content that their consumers already know, and the wireless provider's brand is pumped up."

Johnson said that wireless Internet is about providing consumers with more convenience, which strengthens customer loyalty. Partnerships are key because just one can mean access to a variety of wireless-e-commerce applications and new revenue streams.

AnyDevice.com is establishing a partnership network of providers and device manufacturers so that once they develop an anywhere strategy with a portal or e-business, they can combine to create an even stronger wireless reach for their content.

"Having the wireless network and devices is one thing, but you need the wide variety of content, both push and pull information, to add value for wireless users," Johnson said.

BellSouth Wireless' Hill agreed. "That's how you get to differentiate your package: having partnerships with the folks who are experts in this space," she said. "By the end of this year or early 2001, all the major providers will be providing wireless Internet access. In the next year or so, the speed and the time of connection won't be terribly different. The differentiating factor will be what content deals and applications have been deployed within the system."

BellSouth Wireless partnered with the MyWay.com wireless portal and will select other partners.

"(We look for) content that is not just good to look at but allows you to do something: to buy, to make reservations, to perform an activity," Hill said.

Sprint PCS' Wireless Web debuted in September 1999. Partners include Ameritrade and CNN, and it adds at least one each week.

"We're about open access and picking the top-quality content providers," said Mary Osako, Sprint PCS spokesperson.

Sprint PCS' sticky features include 2-way transactions with Amazon.com and a program that allows subscribers to develop their own sites.

PocketNet offers more than 40 Web sites and the AT&T Personal Web Site, which is both a subscriber's personal portal and a place to personalize his wireless experience with information such as weather, news and stock quotes.

"You can reduce churn by providing a more personalized experience, and you've got the potential to reach a new audience because the more you partner with these portals, the more they can promote your service," Johnson said. "ZDNet has 12 million visitors a month. Wouldn't it be great if Sprint's name or AT&T's name is out there sending the same personalized experience you have on ZDNet?"

Battle of the Brands
Another important issue is whose brand is prominent.

"We certainly want our brand to be prevalent within the service, but customers have a lot of experience online, and there are some very popular Internet brands that we want combined with our branding experience," Hill said. "We're not going to BellSouth-brand everything that goes onto our portal. We want to partner with people who bring their expertise to the product and use their brand to represent that expertise."

When choosing partners, BellSouth recognizes that many customers already have established relationships with Internet sites such as travel services and e-tailers and will want wireless access to them. You still can have your brand in the forefront and control the portal experience, but you also can leverage the power of other brands that subscribers already know.

But might your brand be overshadowed by that of Amazon.com or CNN.com? Don't worry, said Sprint PCS' Osako. For example, when Sprint PCS subscribers launch Wireless Web, the first line is where they can access their account information. Other content providers are located below that line. "Our brand is always out front in the sense that they are always on the Sprint PCS Wireless Web," Osako said.

"The Sprint PCS portal is really providing a 'MySprint,' and that will create a certain amount of loyalty, especially if you customize it to fit your needs," said AnyDevice.com's Johnson. "The more personalizable the experience is, the more the brand that's providing those personalization features will rise up above the brands that are components of that service."

Other challenges include pricing, tapping the e-commerce revenue stream and partnering with e-businesses that meet customers' needs.

"We're getting an introductory industry model right now in the market," said BellSouth Wireless' Hill.

Hill said wireless Internet is an entirely new stage of evolution.

"Providing wireless Internet access is going to become a key piece of simply giving our customers what they want from the transport side of the business" he said. "It's not just a little offshoot or one value-added service product that's ancillary to wireless voice access. It's an entire new line of business: different business models, skill sets, development paths, sales needs. All those things are challenges."