Partnering Becomes a Trend in Wireless Brokerage

Similarly TD Waterhouse teamed up with Aether Systems, the enterprise wireless Internet services provider, as well as Plural, the e-business consultant/developer. In addition to serving as the interface to the various devices, protocols and telecom carriers, TD Waterhouse is using the Aether Intelligent Messaging (AIM) via its proxy server to speed up the transmission.

The choice of two partners is consistent with a trend emerging in wireless brokers where firms like Merrill Lynch picked w-Technologies and E*Trade selected Everypath to develop the wireless application, both chose Aether as the services provider dealing with multiple carriers, devices, data formats and the customers.

As the investor's device makes a number of hops to the carrier and into AIM, the proprietary software performs compression to transfer the data back and forth from the carrier to the device and it handles the whole delivery aspect, retry, and duplication/detection. "It's a nice little black box for us, so we didn't have to go out there and develop it on our own," says Cantelmo.

Aether Systems is also providing its customers with fulfillment-meaning customers sign up for the device, and Aether ships them a complete bundle including a jacket for the Sierra air card-the wireless card that is needed. Customers can order the hardware and service they need to go online with the Pocket PC by going onto https://tdwaterhouse.aethersystems.com Or, if they own a Pocket PC device already-either the Compaq iPaq or HP Jornada, they can activate the application from the TD Waterhouse's Pocket PC Web site.

Cantelmo says that TD Waterhouse chose Aether over other wireless service competitors that he declined to name, because it felt comfortable with AIM, combined with the pricing. With a one-year contract, a customer can sign up for $39.99 a month for the service for an unlimited Internet usage. Ivy is Editor-at-Large for Advanced Trading and Wall Street & Technology. Ivy is responsible for writing in-depth feature articles, daily blogs and news articles with a focus on automated trading in the capital markets. As an industry expert, Ivy has reported on a myriad ... View Full Bio