Lucent Technologies and Netscape to launch Internet portal for people on the move

MURRAY HILL, N.J. - Lucent Technologies (NYSE: LU) today announced that it has licensed Custom Netcenter from Netscape, a subsidiary of America Online (NYSE: AOL), to develop a custom portal designed to serve as the Internet start page for professionals on the move. Lucent's new custom portal, named Zingo, will serve as a virtual laboratory for service providers to test Lucent and third-party developed wireless applications accessible by a range of consumer devices, such as wireless phones and hand-held personal digital assistants (PDAs).

Lucent's Zingo portal is built with Netscape's pioneering Custom Netcenter, custom portal service. Custom Netcenter is the industry's first end-to-end hosted software solution that enables businesses like Lucent to create customized portals that combine Internet content with custom business applications. For example, a typical "road warrior" arriving in a strange city could have driving tips on avoiding downtown traffic jams instantly available from the Web, displayed on either a PDA or in text-to-speech format on a mobile phone.

"Netscape is the first to offer a complete solution that makes these new advances in Internet services a reality," said Scott Davison, senior vice president of programming for Netcenter. "Netscape's Custom Netcenter empowers leading telecommunications network operators to create enhanced new services that can attract and retain customers by delivering personalized business information and services to their best customers."

"Many in the industry are projecting growth for potential wireless data services, but Lucent is taking a lead in proving these concepts in the real world," said Dick Snyder, wireless data strategy director for Lucent's Wireless Networks Group. Lucent's wireless Internet information service will be implemented by participating network operators in collaboration with Spyglass, Inc. (NASDAQ:SPYG) and Wyrex Communications, Inc. of Toronto, Canada and will be enabled by the industry-leading Wireless Applications Protocol (WAP).

A critical requirement of a portal designed for frequent business is the ability to support a wide selection of devices such as cellular phones and PDAs. Lucent's Zingo portal will use Spyglass Prism technology to transform HTML content into VXML (Voice eXtensible Markup Language) for Interactive Voice Response (IVR) applications or WML format for WAP-enabled phones. Through Prism, a single version of content published in standard HTML format can be automatically reformatted for virtually any device with a built-in browser .

Zingo's IVR capability is made possible by Bell Labs developed PhoneBrowser technology, which was demonstrated in partnership with Spyglass at PCS '98 and Wireless IT '98. The prototype provides a voice-controlled interface to Internet services using Bell Labs speech recognition and text-to-speech synthesis. In this manner, mobile customers can have messages and information read to them on virtually any phone. Additionally, they can use a phone to customize Zingo features, and browse the Internet by reciting link titles from the portal or other Web sites.

Zingo is an extension of Lucent's Cooperative Innovationssm Program, established in 1997 to supplement Lucent-developed and branded wireless solutions with those developed by third-party program affiliates. In addition to Spyglass, which is a member of that program, Wyrex, another program affiliate, will act as systems integrator by incorporating the capabilities of its Wireless Application Server to deliver information to users, initially with Short Message Service (SMS) notification. Zingo will offer services based on a user's location in future releases. A beta version of the portal will be on display at the Lucent booth at Supercomm '99, June 7-10 at the Georgia World Congress, Atlanta, Ga.


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