British Telecommunications and Microsoft have announced they have begun a trial of jointly-developed technology for wireless internet services.
The trial, involving 1000 users in the UK and Norway, is being conducted among staff from British Broadcasting Corporation, Credit Suisse First Boston, KPMG, Nortel Networks and the mobile phone unit of Telenor, the companies said in a statement.
On the software side, the test uses an operating system-independent microbrowser from Microsoft. A microbrowser is a browser designed for handheld devices.
Users participating in the test can send and receive e-mail via a mobile phone, as well as access in real time Microsoft Exchange-based calendaring, address files, personalised Web content and information services, Microsoft said yesterday.
The browser, and other technology used in the trial, is not based on the WAP (wireless application protocol) specification for mobile data communications, but subsequent versions will be, Microsoft officials said.
The alliance between BT and Microsoft was first announced in February.