Wireless Data Technology Helps Heating and Cooling Company Increase Business by 15 Percent

WILMINGTON, DE —

Since switching to a Bell Atlantic Mobile wireless data system, productivity at a Wilmington, Delaware-based oil heat and air conditioning business jumped 15 percent after just one year.

Burns & McBride, a 40-year-old family owned business, traded in its two-way radios and cumbersome paperwork system for Bell Atlantic Mobile's AirBridge® Cellular Digital Packet Data (CDPD) service, a system that provides wireless "real-time" access to the company's main database.

Tom McBride, president of Burns & McBride, selected Bell Atlantic Mobile's AirBridge® CDPD service after conducting extensive research on different wireless data services. "Through AirBridge® we have the benefit of utilizing Bell Atlantic Mobile's extensive network while being able to develop and implement our own software package in a cost-effective manner."

Using standard computer laptops mounted in company vans and equipped with wireless CDPD radio modems and Bell Atlantic Mobile's AirBridge® service, Burns & McBride field technicians can log service calls and parts used in real time, retrieve account history, and access other pertinent information, right from their vehicles.

The benefits of this AirBridge® CDPD service include an increase in productivity, quicker turn-around time for customers, elimination of handwritten time sheets, reduced administration time, and seamless communication between employees at the home office and off-site locations.

"AirBridge® service gives your employees instant access to your dispatch center and critical databases from any off-site location," said John Stratton, president of Bell Atlantic Mobile's Philadelphia region. "We're finding that companies of all sizes, both large and small, are tapping into technologically-advanced systems such as this. AirBridge® is the wave of the future - companies without it will be left behind."

Burns & McBride used Princeton-based Nettech Systems' InstantRF family of wireless middleware, to optimize and enhance its software application's functionality and performance over Bell Atlantic Mobile's CDPD network. Wireless data modems for the laptop computers are provided by Sierra.

McBride noted that the system has also enabled his company to move one of its two dispatchers to customer service. "Now, only one dispatcher is needed since technicians get the times and locations of their service calls via computer."

Bell Atlantic Mobile owns and operates the largest network in the East, covering 112,000 square miles, and the largest chain of retail outlets devoted exclusively to wireless voice, data and paging. Based in Bedminster, NJ, Bell Atlantic Mobile has 5.5 million customers and 7,000 employees from Maine to Georgia and, through a separate subsidiary, in the Southwest. Through its "Wireless at Work..." community relations program, the company uses its technology to help individuals and communities improve security and emergency communications. Bell Atlantic is one of the world's largest wireless communications companies, with domestic operations in 25 states and international investments spanning Latin America, Europe and the Pacific Rim. For more information on Bell Atlantic Mobile visit: www.bam.com; on global operations visit: www.bellatlantic.com/worldwide.

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