FarEasTone to offer e-mail to users

Far EasTone Telecommunications Co (遠傳電信), the nation's third-biggest mobile operator, said yesterday that it will begin offering e-mail service based on Google Inc's Gmail tomorrow.

This will make the company the first local telecom operator to offer the free e-mail service on its handset platform, Far EasTone said in a statement.

Google search will also be available along with the launch of Gmail, the company said.

Early last month Far EasTone chairman Douglas Hsu (徐旭東) met YouTube co-founder Steve Chen (陳士駿) and Google Taiwan's head of sales and business development Rebecca Kuei (張成秀) to discuss possible partnerships.

The introduction of Gmail service was the result of those discussions, the company said.

Far EasTone will enhance its partnership with Google by offering other services such as Google Maps, mobile advertisements and multimedia, it said.

Chen had said that YouTube, the video-sharing portal owned by Google, would be going mobile by the end of next year, allowing users to share video clips on handsets.

Mio Technology Ltd (宇達電通), the world's No. 3 portable navigation device (PND) maker, was also looking to work with Google to offer differentiated services.

Mio president Samuel Wang said last month that by the end of the year its PNDs would be bundled with Google's search engine. This would make it easier to use Google to search for localized information, such as restaurants, he said.

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KDDI to offer cellphone subscribers e-mail service