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Laddish One 2 One attempts corporate breakthrough

They've got the troughs and they're going for it

The newly formed multimedia division of telephone firm One 2 One said today that it is to break into the corporate data sector, courtesy of IBM, Sun and its parent, Deutsche Telekom. John Drinkwater, marketing head at One 2 One's UK operation, said that an analysis of the firm's call pattern reveals it has 20 million units of use spare per day, and that its customers seem to use its service mostly when the pubs opened, and later, when the pubs shut. (Orange, on the other hand, had a flat usage model during every hour of the day and night, which meant its rival was unable to offer such corporate services, he claims.) That left a huge trough of spare call space in the morning, which his multimedia unit will use to target the corporate market, using enabling technologies such as Bluetooth, GPRS and other available methods. Rather than sign up a big portal, Drinkwater said that his division had struck individual deals with content and other services providers, and will provide news, financial information, and sport information. This is just the beginning, he said. Parent Deutsche Telekom is investing a million pounds a day in improving the One 2 One network, and will launch a GPRS service in autumn this year with continuous bandwidth at speeds similar to 56kbps modems. The firm will offer large corporations permanent attachment to their intranets and will offer devices to allow them to do so. Although the firm refused to be drawn on the exact nature of its deal with IBM, sources at the company did confirm that it was one of 32 other companies it was partnering as part of push into the business market. It was more forthcoming about its deal with Sun. One 2 One will use Java as its medium to deliver some of the services it will deliver. Further, One 2 One will become market leader in mobile corporate data, Drinkwater claims. This is likely to account for nearly 30 per cent of its bandwidth by the year 2003. ®

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