Compiled by Anne Lindner
Yahoo Japan to Offer High-Speed Internet Service
Yahoo Japan said Tuesday that it will offer high-speed Internet access in major Japanese cities beginning in August. The service is to be the product of a joint venture between Yahoo Japan and its parent corporation, Softbank Corp. BB Technologies Corp., as the new company will be called, will offer the new DSL broadband service under the name "Yahoo! BB."
The service is meant to be a new revenue source for Yahoo Japan due to slowing growth in advertising revenue. Softbank will have a 51 percent stake in BB Technologies. Yahoo Japan will own 10 percent and other Softbank companies will control the remainder. With a goal of signing up 1 million subscribers by Dec. 31, Yahoo Japan and Softbank said they will provide movies, music and other content to users. The monthly subscription fee will be $19.
Free SMS Lottery Makes Debut with ZagMe
ZagMe, a company that offers special shopping deals to users through their mobile phones, recently launched what it claims is the first free SMS lottery. Called ZagLotto, the game offers users a daily prize of £50,000 if they send a text message to ZagMe containing the correct combination of seven digits. Anyone lucky enough to guess all seven numbers will share the prize. Odds are 10 million to one.
Director of Marketing Russell Buckley said ZagMe is looking for a sponsor for the lottery. "We're not asking big money," he said. "The service will start simple to get people interested."
Promotion will begin with ZagMe's 80,000-user database, which it developed on-site at Lakeside and Bluewater shopping malls in England. Such brands as HMV, Pizza Hut and Top Shop have already joined in on the promotions.
High Speed Internet: Coming to a Plane Near You
Boeing Co. recently announced that American Airlines, United Airlines and Delta Air Lines have taken minor stakes in its plan to provide Internet access during flights. Called Connexion, the service will cost around $20 an hour, about the same price as a satellite phone call from a plane.
Instead of the current 9,400-bit connection to the Internet that the same phones offer, Connexion pledges a 5-megabit connection. Like a cable line, though, the speed would drag down as more people get online.
Boeing is supposed to begin installing the service on 500 planes in the middle of 2002. A surfboard-shaped antenna attached to the top of the plane will make the high-speed Web connection possible, enabling the plane to glean signals from satellites. Users will be able to access the Web, e-mail, live television and their corporate intranets. At least one analyst, however, was doubtful that many people would be interested in using it.
"Fifty-six percent of people on planes for business travel bring laptops," said Henry Harteveldt, a travel analyst with Forrester Research, "and in six years I've never once seen anyone try to hook a PC into those [sky] phones' data ports and surf the Web."
The air travel industry has more urgent customer service-related issues to work on before Internet service from planes, he added.
"The majority of people would like basics taken care of first--planes on time, cleaning the seats once a month and offering a consistently pleasant service," Harteveldt. "I hope the airlines don't think they have another Priceline on their hands and think there's going to be an uptick in their stocks."
Common Standard for Mobile Phone Companies
Last week Reuters reported that the world's leading mobile phone makers and service providers have launched an industry-wide drive for a common mobile Internet standard. The purpose: to get more people on the Internet-through-cell-phone bandwagon. The Mobile Services Initiative aspires to provide a more effective open software standard than the heavily criticized Wireless Application Protocol did.
Company Hopes Cash Cards Drive Indians to Buy Online
E-commerce may still be relatively new to most residents of India, but the Indian firm Smartcc.com is hoping that supplying people with a pre-paid cash card option will help ease fears about the security of online shopping.
The scratch-and-use cards, called "Green," enable users to enter a code during Internet transactions linked to Smartcc's website. The company said that unlike with credit cards, there is no risk of misuse. The cards themselves are available through a chain of retail outlets and Internet parlors. Internet retailers can use the money credited to their account to shop on a number of affiliated sites that have backend deals with Smartcc.
India's low credit card penetration and concerns over the security of using credit cards for Internet purchases has led many portals to bet on cash on delivery, pre-paid cash cards and debit cards to get people to use their service.
The pre-paid cash cards were launched in Bombay, Delhi and Bangalore, and there are plans to expand the service. The co-founder and CEO of Smartcc, Divyanshu Mishra, told Reuters that 80 percent of the 8,000 registered users have taken advantage of the cash cards. The cards are accepted at 15 Indian
websites including Fabmart.com, Sify.com and Rediff.com. The number of India's Web users is expected to grow from the current 2 million to 15 million by the end of 2003.