23.02.2001
One hit Domain Numbers will fire development of exploding e-mobile market
Arriving at an unfamiliar airport, a traveler presses four buttons on his mobile phone to spell out "taxi." Via his mobile screen he receives directions to the nearest taxi rank and phone numberlinks to the major local taxi companies.
Waiting for the taxi he hits five buttons for "hotel" and receives on his phone screen a list of major hotels with their telephone numbers.
Back in the taxi he again hits five buttons for "email" to collect this latest messages directly to his phone screen. He settles back, hits another five buttons for "stock" and checks on how his stocks are doing - before finally punching four buttons for "news" to scan the headlines.
Current forecasts are that 1.3 billion people worldwide will be able to employ mobile internet enabled phones to access services like this within the next five years.
Globally it is estimated the mobile-commerce (m-Commerce) mark will reach $200 billion by 2004 compared to $600 million last year.
But anyone who has tried to pick away at entering a typical web address into their mobile phone, will have recognised that surfing the wireless web can be a tedious and far from pleasant task
A New Zealand company called Domain Numbers Limited (DNL) has devised a method of vastly simplifying the process. The company has developed what it calls NumericAlpha technology to enable companies to develop portal services based around a large list of premium, generic, numeric Domain names - Internet Protocol addresses - that DNL has acquired.
The beauty of the NumericAlpha technology is that it facilitates URL entry to the Internet by minimizing the number of key presses required per character to just one.
At present spelling out the word "news" for example using a 0-9 mobile phone keypad, requires the user to hit the 6 button twice, the 3 button twice, the 9 button once and the 7 button four times to select the correct alpha characters. In this example, a total of nine key presses are required to spell out a four letter word.
Using the NumericAlpha system, the mobile user only has to press each key on the keypad once to select any of the letters on that key to access a wide range of generic services via domain names like "police," "doctor," "home" or whatever.
Information under any of the NumericAlpha portals can be accessed easily and directly with any internet capable mobile phone, without the need for any special reconfiguration of the phone nor modification of its browser and are wireless technology independent making them valuable with WAP, i-mode, or whatever.
DNL is currently working with PricewaterhouseCoopers in seeking expressions of interest from potential investors or purchasers.
To view an Expression of Interest memorandum prepared by PricewaterhouseCoopers about the technology visit www.77.co.nz.
