SBC Communications Inc. and BellSouth Corp., the owners of Cingular Wireless, on Thursday said they are developing a service that will allow residential customers to use a single bucket of local and long distance minutes for their landline and wireless phones.
SBC said a trial is underway in Texas.
The new service, called MinuteShare, will be available later this year, say SBC and BellSouth. The companies say they will sell MinuteShare through their call centers and retail outlets.
“The future is in delivering products that integrate wireline and wireless services in a way that makes them more useful, convenient and valuable for our customers,” said Lea Ann Champion, SBC chief marketing officer, in a statement.
Calls to the home landline phone will not count toward the monthly minutes, the companies said.
