'Cnn Mobile' Adds U.S., Australia To Markets

Mobile Phone News, August 2, 1999

New York-based Time-Warner Inc.'s [TWX] CNN unit, which broadcasts around the clock on cable, will make available its Internet news items to mobile phone subscribers of BellSouth Corp.'s [BLS] in the United States and of Telstra Corp. Ltd. in Australia.

CNN Interactive partnered with Atlanta-based BellSouth for the domestic launch of CNN Mobile, after starting it in nine European and Asian markets in February. BellSouth, which has not set prices for the service, will make CNN content available in all of its digital wireless markets in a short message format within this year. Later, it will package the service with a Wireless Application Protocol-based e-mail service it's developing.

Subscribers will simply request that they be added to the CNN content distribution, BellSouth spokesman Shawn Steward says. Initially, the content will include news, finance and sports headlines and weather information.

"Our customers have been asking for more data-type services to be delivered through their handsets," Steward said. "We see that as a growing part of our service."

Telstra will make CNN Mobile available later this year via WAP services.

(Shawn Steward, BellSouth, 404/249-0476; Cathy Clarke, Telstra, 203/532-1339.)