News 1999
Make Contact the Smartcard Way with Virgin Mobile
15/12/1999
The future becomes reality today with the launch of a suite of internet services for every Virgin Mobile phone, thanks to Virgin's smartcard technology.
- Internet download of names and numbers to each phone's SIM card
- Full e-mail of up to 32,000 characters, with attachments, in and out boxes to and from all phones
- Internet download of e-mail addresses
- Internet browser, using WML-compatible Virgin Mobile's Advanced Wireless Technology Platform, to surf music, TV listings, and rail info web sites
All Virgin Mobile customers can now use the web to download their contact name and phone numbers straight to their phone. The service, using Virgin Mobile's exclusive smartcard technology, does away with the chore of re-keying contacts into a phone's memory.
With Virgin Mobile customers can now download up to 200 of their favourite names and numbers from their PC or from their personal organiser to their Virgin Mobile phone.
Contacts are forwarded to a special area on Virgin Mobile's website, via Microsoft Outlook, and are then sent over the air to a customer's phone and stored on the 32K SIM card - the biggest memory SIM card available on any UK network.
Contacts can be easily updated or amended at any time.
In addition, in mid January Virgin Mobile will be introducing a full e-mail service. Customers will have an in-box and an out-box on their mobile's screen - just like on a PC - and will be able to send and receive messages up to 32,000 characters in length, equivalent to 3 pages or 400 lines of A4 type. This service dwarfs anything available on rival networks which use SMS as pseudo e-mail with messages restricted to 160 characters or less. Virgin Mobile customers can also see when they have received attachments on their phones.
E-mail addresses can be stored on the SIM, via the web, in the same way as names and phone numbers.
Customers can use any e-mail account- not just the Virgin Net e-mail service -every Virgin Mobile customer is given free when they buy their phone.
Also in the first quarter next year, Virgin Mobile will be introducing web browsing to every one of its phones. Using its own version of WAP written onto the Virgin Mobile SIM card, rather than into specific handsets, Virgin Mobile's Advanced Wireless Technology Platform will allow customers to browse WML internet sites (without the need of a special WAP phone).
Virgin Mobile customers will be able to access specific internet content: a music commerce site provided by Virgin Megastores and bespoke sites containing train timetable and ticket information, as well as a national and regional TV listings site.
All of this is possible as a direct result of the Virgin Mobile Advanced Wireless Technology Platform built into each and every Virgin Mobile SIM card. The technology places Virgin Mobile at the forefront of mobile communications technology and allows it to launch these futuristic applications today. Virgin Mobile: for everyone, not just the privileged few.
Comments Tom Alexander, managing director of Virgin Mobile: "With its no-catch, low-cost tariff; with its m-commerce discounts on travel and music, Virgin Mobile has positioned itself as the market leader in terms of consumer innovation. Today, we prove why the future is Virgin Mobile with the launch of easy-to-use internet services - on all our phones. Virgin is a mass-market company and unlike some other mobile networks which equip only their premium-priced handsets with the most advanced technology, we value all our customers and have put the UK's most powerful SIM card as a standard feature into each of our phones."
