A New Service Lets E-Mailers Use a Telephone Instead of a Computer

A Baltimore company is attempting to bring the electronic-messaging revolution full circle this week as it launches an e-mail service that uses a telephone, rather than a personal computer, to send messages.

The product, called ibyphone, borrows a technique from the paging industry and uses live telephone operators to type e-mail messages called in by customers. The operators then send the messages, which can include a pre-designed signature file, out over the Internet. The service costs about a dollar for each minute of use.

“Sometimes simple solutions make a lot of sense,” said ibyphone user Michael Doppelt of New York investment house Bear Stearns. “It’s great to be able to send e-mail from my mobile phone, when I can’t take my eyes off the road or don’t have my laptop along or whatever.”

Unlike other unified electronic-messaging systems, ibyphone lacks a way for users to receive e-mail without a computer. Executives at XACT TeleSolutions, developer of the ibyphone, say they are working on a plan to use operators to retrieve e-mail messages as well as send them.

Still, ibyphone faces numerous challenges in the emerging but already fiercely competitive market.

A number of industry heavyweights, including Lucent Technologies Inc., Microsoft Corp., Sun Microsystems Inc. and Northern Telecom Ltd., are developing or marketing products that promise a single, easy-to-use way to retrieve or send voice, facsimile and e-mail messages.

“They face a tremendous uphill battle in that there are a lot of major players out there already,” said Susan Eustin, president of WinterGreen Research, a technology consulting firm in Lexington, Mass. “Then there is the question of costs. People don’t want to pay more than they are paying now for” messaging services.

Dan Joseph, co-founder and chief executive of XACT TeleSolutions, said he hopes to get around those obstacles by carving out a niche targeting traveling business executives and busy professionals on the move.

“Our product is aimed at helping customers access any kind of information via our service,” Joseph said. “People don’t want to buy a new device every time somebody comes up with a new communications idea.”