September 30, 2004
Weathernews to Provide Weather Information Service "Weathernews" to Browser Mobile Phone Users of Optus, Australia
-- Weather information provided to "Optus ZOO", an official service menu used by over 860,000 people--
On September 28th, 2004, Weathernews Inc. (Group Chairman & CEO: Hiroyoshi Ishibashi), the world’s largest publicly traded full service weather company released its weather content site "Weathernews" on the SingTel Optus Pty Limited GPRS network. Optus is a leading communication company based in Australia and is a subsidiary of SingTel, Asia’s largest mobile phone carrier. Weathernews currently provides "Weathernews" weather content to users in over 14 countries. Weathernews is extremely excited in being able to offer Optus customers true weather risk communication and looks forward to developing further weather risk communication services via mobile "Weathernews".
"Weathernews" can be accessed via Optus ZOO (www.optuszoo.com.au), which currently has more than 860,000 users and is fast becoming the dominant mobile content portal in Australia. "Weathernews" gives users access to four day weather forecasts including temperatures, likelihood of rain as well as sunrise and sunset times for most major Australian locations and key international cities. "Weathernews" also gives users the ability to view regional radar and satellite images. In addition, users can search for locations which may not be listed using the "Weathernews" powerful search engine.
On top of weather forecasts, radar and satellite images, "Weathernews" will provide weather risk communication for leisure activities such as marine sports, major sporting venues, and skiing (seasonal). "Weathernews" will also combine our powerful in-house wave model to deliver swell forecasts for most major beaches Australia wide.
"Weathernews" will be available to Optus customers for a very reasonable AUD$2.20 per month subscription (GST inc.). Capitalizing on its global experience, Weathernews will continue to add more risk communication content to the site in order to provide Australian users with weather the information they need to plan more effectively.
Optus is an Australian leader in integrated communications providing a broad range of services including mobile, national and long distance services, local telephony, international telephony, business network services, Internet and satellite services and subscription television. In Australia, it is the second largest mobile phone operator with more than 5 million mobile customers and holds approximately 35 percent of the domestic mobile phone market.
Weathernews will continue to launch weather information services targeting mobile phone carriers across the world.
