Globe offers customized wireless email service

MANILA, Philippines - Mobile carrier Globe Telecom has introduced a new service that target users who want to have wireless email delivered via their phones. At a recent briefing, Globe executives said it has deployed Nokia’s Intellisync Wireless Email service for mobile workers who prefer to have their emails “pushed" to their phones at their chosen time and interval. The new email service, according to company officials, does not directly compete with the Blackberry service but is aimed primarily at “moderate" users of wireless email. Globe also currently offers Blackberry service to about 8,000 subscribers. The new service is currently open to corporate clients but Globe executives said it will soon be available for all Globe subscribers. Signing up for the service would mean a minimum monthly fee of P150 that will be charged over a postpaid plan. Consumption beyond the 2MB free data allocation is priced at 15 centavos per kilobyte. Gil Genio, head of Globe Business, said his company has acknowledged the fact that some executives, or even ordinary mobile users, are averse to using a Blackberry because of the fact that emails are perpetually coming in. He said that while wireless email can indeed be “enslaving," managing it in a better way could also improve the way mobile employees do their work. In offering the service, Globe further explained that it “wants to offer broadest compatibility to its customers and not limit them to one email server or device." Officials from Nokia Philippines, who were also present during the launch event, said users of the service can set “when" and “what" to sync in their emails so messages won’t continuously flow in to their mobile phones. Nokia executives said the service runs on a wide range of mobile devices, including Windows Mobile-based phones. The company said the email service is part of the Nokia Intellisync Mobile Suite, a “private label wireless email and Personal Information Management (PIM) solution" which it has sold to more than 40 operators in the past 20 months. Nokia pointed out that the Intellisync Wireless Email works on multiple groupware environments—ISP, Microsoft Exchange, Lotus Notes or Groupwise and can run on virtually any kind of device platform—Symbian, Windows or Pocket PC. Apart from enabling subscribers to synchronize in real-time their emails on their mobile devices, the email service allows users to compose, read, forward, delete and reply to emails, as well as create, download and view, and also upload attachments. “With bi-directional synchronization, users will not have to go back to the PCs to manage their mailboxes; tasks that are performed on the mobile device are synchronized with the server and are reflected each time the user checks his email on his PC, and vice versa," Globe said. - GMANews.TV