Businesses and professionals have come to expect certain value-added services from their wireless carriers. Voice communications alone no longer satisfies.

Subscribers want wireless access to e-mail, appointments and contacts from their mobile phones, smartphones and mail phones. The success of Research In Motion (RIM) and its BlackBerry platform prove that.

In addition to RIM, there are a number of other players in this space. Visto, for example, licenses its mobile e-mail platform to wireless carriers, who turn around and sell it under their own brand name. Another company, SEVEN, recently licensed its data access solutions to Cingular.

A lesser-known vendor, Xpherix, signed three mobile operators—Cellular One, Cellular South and NTELOS—on for its wireless productivity solution this week. While the company has inked similar deals with a number of other carriers, none are as high profile as its partnership with Verizon Wireless, which started offering Xpherix-based services back in January 2004.

Called Remo, Xpherix's software lets wireless subscribers securely access messages from seven different POP3 or IMAP accounts and synchronizes contacts and calendar content from desktop applications, such as Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Outlook Express, Lotus Notes and the Palm Desktop, all from their mobile handsets. Two applications, iPhonebook and iDatebook, which are a part of Remo, are also available as standalone wireless contact and calendar solutions.

To Xpherix, inking deals with Cellular One, Cellular South and NTELOS endorses not only itself, but also the wireless e-mail and data access industry as a whole.

Xpherix President and CEO Nick Walker commented, "the decision by these operators to deploy Remo, iPhonebook and iDatebook validates the growing demand for mobile productivity applications and will provide business and individual users alike an affordable and convenient way to stay connected on one mobile device."