It enables you to open the door to all sorts of things, Cingular chief executive Stephen Carter told Reuters at Supercomm 2001, a technology show taking place here this week. The program's ultimate goal is not to sell everyone everything, but offer a wide array of services that will make Cingular phones more desirable and user-friendly, he said. Cingular, jointly owned by BellSouth Corp. and SBC Communications Inc., has more than 19 million subscribers. To use the service, customers need an Internet-enabled personal computer and a cell phone with messaging capabilities, Cingular said. Carter also said Cingular is about to launch GPRS, or general packet radio service commercial services, in California.
GPRS technology allows faster access to data through ''always-on'' network connections.
Customers are charged by the information they retrieve, not the length of a call. Carter told several hundred industry officials, analysts and reporters at Supercomm on Monday morning that being first with 3G technology is not as important as being the first to offer the applications consumers want. We shouldn't be waiting around for 3G, he said. We've got to do the applications to get people interested now. Even if it doesn't work quite as fast, it can still be very, very functional.