Sonera Zed, the UK-based subsidiary of Finnish telecommunications group
Sonera, has developed zed for business, a wireless service based on Wap
technology for British SMEs and corporates.
The service has been available to Finnish users for more than two years and
to date around 600,000 people use it each month. Registered users on the
zed Web site were more than 170,000 at the end of March 2000, said Sonera.
Users of zed for business can securely access business applications such as
e-mail, calendar and contact databases via a Wap compatible handheld device
be that a phone or PDA.
Businesses have been promised wireless services for many months, but the
offerings have been unreliable or time-consuming users have often faced
between 15 and 17 clicks on a mobile phone before reaching their e-mails.
When the service was demonstrated to us on a Wap phone and a
communicator, it took a mere four clicks – about 15 seconds – to access an
e-mail.
Sonera currently has a number of pilot schemes running within UK companies
at the moment, companies that it hopes will eventually become customers.
The businesses include marketing agency – Claydon Heeley Jones Mason,
business consultancy Credo, and peoplesound.com, an online music
distributor.