The Business of Information Taps the Moving Market : Technology: PacTel inaugurates its first information referral service for motorists with cellular phones.

A decade ago, phone users were content to let their fingers do the walking. Now San Diegans are being told to put their fingers in drive.

Welcome to the cellular age.

Traffic escape routes, current stock market indicators, restaurant reservations--all can be had through the information referral service offered mobile phone users by PacTel Cellular, a sister company of Pacific Bell.

On Monday, less than a month after the U.S. Court of Appeals lifted an order banning regional phone companies from providing such services, PacTel went into the business of hawking information, choosing San Diego County as its first test site.

The ruling has led to protests from cable television firms, newspapers and other information service companies concerned about what they contend would be unfair competition from phone companies.

Although not the first, the referral system is the most substantial foray into information services by the nation’s Baby Bell companies.

The system, roughly the equivalent of a Yellow Pages on wheels, imposes no additional charge to callers who gain access to the 280 vendors and services listed in the system. Subscriber companies pay PacTel $100 to $300 for each listing. Callers are charged normal on-line phone fees.

The service is tailored to mobile phone users, taking into account the proclivities of the cellular set--high-tech, high-income people intimate with the ways of phone and fax, said Doron Lurie, director of sales and marketing at PacTel Cellular.

The basic fee structure for PacTel cellular includes a monthly access fee of $35 and a base rate of 40 cents each minute during the day. The charge is 20 cents at night. Discounts of up to 15% are offered on all calls, depending on use each month.

PacTel began focusing on the information service field about one year ago, when the lifting of the ban on information dispensing appeared imminent, Lurie said.

Private information companies have been offering many of the services now available through PacTel, which is banking on the centralized directory approach to increase the on-line time of current mobile phone subscribers and to attract new users.

The differences between the PacTel system and private line services--or “900” numbers--are considerable. For example, the 900 numbers carry single specialty services such as access to horoscope readings or sexually explicit conversationalists. The numbers are generally connected to recordings and are not compiled in a directory.

In contrast, a motorist using the PacTel system can, for example, be connected with an employee of Metro Traffic, a traffic monitoring company. The commuter can directly ask for a description of traffic in an area and for suggestions on the quickest route to a given destination. Metro Traffic will have employees specifically assigned to handle PacTel callers, a company spokesman said.

Because of driver safety considerations, access to an operator or any referral in the system requires pushing a maximum of six buttons, Lurie said.

As PacTel began actively developing technology for the system, it gauged cellular phone users’ willingness to pay higher bills in exchange for convenience. The average PacTel subscriber in San Diego paid $85 a month for cellular phone use last year, Lurie said. He declined to say how much money PacTel invested to develop the system.

Current users were also surveyed on what information would most interest them.

Categories named most often: personalized traffic reports, financial listings, restaurant descriptions, sports scores and entertainment listings, Lurie said.

The system is still in the formative stages, Lurie said, and will expand into new areas based on user interests. By next month, PacTel says, customers with mobile facsimile machines will be able to have printed items such as restaurant menus or airline schedules transmitted to their cars.

By 5 p.m. Monday on the first day of use, the system received more than 200 calls, PacTel said.

San Diego was chosen as the first area to receive the service because of a high concentration of mobile phone users--about three times the national average of 1.1% of the population.

Also, compared to other major PacTel markets, San Diego has a higher concentration of “service-oriented businesses” that are more likely to advertise through a cellular directory, Lurie said. The numbers of San Diego customers and potential businesses also are not as intimidating as other markets, he said.

“San Diego is one of the more controllable markets,” Lurie said. “For experimenting, San Diego is a little easier to get your arms around . . . than, say, Los Angeles.”

In San Diego there are about 80,000 cellular phone users, more than 60% of whom are PacTel customers. The rest subscribe to U.S. West, a private cellular phone service.

A spokeswoman for U.S. West said the company is developing a similar information system.