Excite@Home and AT&T Announce Launch of Excite Mobile on New AT&T PocketNet Service - Company Business and Marketing

Cambridge Telcom Report, May 22, 2000

Excite@Home (Nasdaq: ATHM - news) and AT&T Wireless (NYSE: AWE) Thursday announced the launch of Excite Mobile, Excite's portal for mobile users, on the new AT&T Digital PocketNet(SM) service. Excite Mobile is the only branded portal on the PocketNet Service's mobile homepage as well as the first portal to distribute its full service on the carrier. AT&T's wireless packet data network is unique in that users pay a low, monthly flat rate for unlimited Internet access, removing a significant barrier to mobile Web use.

Excite@Home and AT&T Wireless also announced Thursday a joint distribution deal to co-market the mobile services of each company. AT&T Wireless will include Excite Mobile on its $14.99-per-month unlimited-access service, and Excite will market AT&T wireless services through the Excite Mobile portal at mobile.excite.com, where users can purchase the AT&T Digital PocketNet service or cell phones with the service. An extension of Excite@Home's broadband online service strategy, Excite Mobile provides mobile Web users with their customized portfolio of news, directions, weather and other personal and location-based information to deliver relevant information directly to users. With AT&T's packet data network, users will no longer pay by the minute to, for example, compose e-mail, manage calendar information or access driving directions.

"Through this relationship, we are providing AT&T wireless subscribers with the next generation of wireless Web services: a cost-effective service that anticipates users' needs and presents them with a personalized experience that represents their interests," said Rob Wilen, senior director and group manager for Wireless at Excite@Home. "The Excite Mobile and PocketNet services work together to eliminate the barriers of complexity and cost to wireless Web access."

"We are pleased to have the Excite Mobile portal as part of AT&T Digital PocketNet service," said Kendra VanderMeulen, senior vice president of Product Development and Strategy at AT&T Wireless Services. "What's different is that where users once paid $15 per month for a limited number of minutes, they now have an unlimited number of minutes plus a personalized, relevant mobile environment."

For $14.99 per month, AT&T Digital PocketNet subscribers have access to Excite Mobile's full suite of services and have the option to select Excite Mobile as the home page on their cell phone browsers. Alternatively, consumers can subscribe to a "Plus" service for $6.99 per month that provides a subset of services, such as Web content, e-commerce sites and Excite Inbox e-mail. The AT&T Digital PocketNet service is available on the new Ericsson R280LX and the Mitsubishi MobileAccess T-250 phones.

Excite Mobile features the first customizable mobile home page in the United States, so users can access their favorite items faster by moving them to the top of the menu or by removing menu items they don't use.

Users of Excite Mobile can take advantage of: 1) Excite Inbox: Users can read, write, file and delete messages using their Excite Inbox e-mail account and create messages from their address book in Excite Planner. 2) Excite Planner: includes a user's address book, calendar, to-do list and notepad. 3) Phonebooks: Users can access location-based Yellow Pages, including searches by category, such as coffee or gas stations, and searches by specific business name to locate a nearby store or office. Also included are People Finder (White Pages), an ATM Finder and a reverse lookup function where a user can enter a phone number to retrieve a name and address. 4) Entertainment: includes location-based movie listings, new releases in theaters, on video and on DVD, top box office movies, horoscopes, lottery results and fortune cookies. 5) Money: includes "My Portfolio," stock quotes and stock and market news. 6) News: includes the user's personal "My News" topics, plus top stories, technology news and business, sports and "oddly enough" news. 7) Weather: Individuals can access "My Weather" and find weather by zip code, city and state. Weather can also be viewed by "My Places," which saves and delivers weather according to a user's most-frequented or favorite locations. 8) Sports: includes "My Sports," baseball, golf, hockey, college and pro basketball, motor racing, soccer and tennis scores and results. 9) Directions:

Individuals can pull up locations by address or through My Places to access commonly used locations to use as start or end points.

"Personalization is the key element that increases value to mobile users by putting the information that's germane to them at their fingertips -- it changes the wireless Web experience to be convenient and simple," Wilen said. "Personalization is one of our core competencies and our focus for the mobile portal, which is critical to the mobile experience given the limited screen space, limited bandwidth and online rates on mobile Web devices."