FedEx Teams With AT&T On Wireless Tracking Service

FedEx Corp. said Monday that AT&T will be its first major point of distribution for the wireless package-tracking and drop-off locator applications the shipping company launched last week.

Under the terms of the agreement, FedEx will be the only transportation company with an application available through the AT&T Digital PocketNet Service. Subscribers will be able to use wireless devices to track their shipments and to find the FedEx location nearest to them by keying in a ZIP code.

The partnership will give FedEx access to more than 500,000 subscribers, and its application will be placed in AT&T's portal alongside ESPN, eBay, and others looking to extend their capabilities to the wireless Web. "A parallel in the traditional Web world would be businesses that are on the Web site of a major portal like Yahoo," says Scott Edison, AT&T business development manager. "Using FedEx's application on our portal will drive more traffic to FedEx." The services are available through AT&T's PocketNet Service at no additional charge to subscribers.

A recent International Data Corp. report says the number of mobile and remote workers in the United States will increase at a 9% compound annual growth rate, from 39 million in 2000 to 55 million in 2004. Says Gartner analyst Tole Hart, "The demand for these types of services may be pretty low now, but they will become valuable as wireless devices become more popular."