Sun Microsystems is trying to push further into the mobile market by means of a partnership with Telenor Mobile, Norway’s biggest cellular carrier. The two are working together to build applications and services for the mobile market. The first, according to Knut Alnes, Sun’s account manager for Telenor Mobile, will be a calendaring system accessible using WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) and running on Sun’s scheduling servers.
From there, said Alnes, the idea is to expand the service to include, for instance, the ability to push event dates to calendars in line with subscribers’ personal profiles, and then lead customers to ticketing and booking services as well. One possibility might be to offer flights and vacation services, based on dates and preferences supplied by the subscriber. Other applications will follow. This is just the first in a number of projects which will arise out of Sun/Netscape alliance technologies, he said.
Sun has relationships with several other GSM operators, in Europe and elsewhere. But Telenor Mobile’s will likely be the first to go operational. We’ve given them a high priority, said Alnes. They’re advanced technologically and they’re eager to try out and test new products. We need their feedback to work out how we proceed.
Although there are still very few WAP-enabled handsets on the market, Telenor Mobile has partially short-circuited the long waiting lists by supplying its customers with new SIM cards, designed by a Swedish company called Across Wireless, which incorporate a stripped-down WAP browser. The new SIMs will work in any phone capable of using the SIM Toolkit standard, which includes all handsets sold by Telenor Mobile since the beginning of this year.
