Not since word leaked out about Santa Claus' list of who's naughty and who's nice has a catalog of personal information generated so much consternation and controversy as the wireless 411 directory presented before Congress in September by the Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association.

The directory, which still awaits a congressional vote as of press time, would create a national directory assistance service for wireless subscribers. The solution put forth by the CTIA is founded on four basic tenets: That a subscriber's inclusion in the directory be opt-in only; that there will be no fee to opt in or out; that directory data will be held exclusively by a secure third party; and that the data cannot be sold or accessed by any other entity for any other purpose.

Despite those checks and balances, the wireless 411 idea itself proved so troubling to Senators Arlen Specter (R-Penn.) and Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) that they demanded amendments requiring, by law, that any existing cellular customer or new customer be allowed to keep their mobile number out of the directory at no charge — conditions already a part of the original CTIA proposal, it's worth noting. Moreover, the concept proved to be such an anathema to Verizon Wireless that CEO Dennis Strigl told the Senate Commerce Committee the carrier would never submit its 40.4 million subscriber numbers for inclusion.

But even in the face of congressional anxiety and Verizon's refusal to play ball, consumers appear increasingly interested in the prospect of such a wireless directory, no doubt encouraged by the success of a federal Do Not Call list that laid telemarketing to waste. A recent independent consumer survey by The Pierz Group reports that among the 1503 wireless subscribers polled, 62% would list their mobile number with the right privacy safeguards in place. Respondents most strongly favored the wireless 411 solution developed by Carabassett, Maine-based contact information services provider Wireless Directory Network (WDN), which would allow consumers one of three choices: listed, not listed or listed for messages only, which would require prospective callers to pay a premium to leave a text notification (or ComNote, in WDN parlance) with the party they wish to contact.

“With a ComNote, your information will not be revealed to the operator or to anyone on the Internet,” said Jeff Strunk, WDN's founder. “It's a communication notification system — someone sends you a text message and asks you to please call them back. Your number is never revealed. That's totally the key — we're not compromising the integrity of anyone's information.”

Yet despite consumer approval for WDN's approach, the CTIA appointed rival contact information services provider Qsent as the secure third party on which its solution hinges — even though that solution gained approval from only about 50% of respondents to The Pierz Group study. The decision left Strunk flummoxed.

“I'm a player — I was in the RFP process,” Strunk said. “We're here for real. We have a system that can generate money way above and beyond what Qsent is doing.”

A former freestyle skiing competitor and coach — WDN's office sits just outside the Sugarloaf Ski Resort — Strunk first entered the business world via Strunk Games, an educational board game developer best known for its award-winning game Stack. The inspiration for wireless directory assistance struck in 1997, while he was in Chicago attending a toy fair.

“I'd just gotten a cell phone, and I couldn't remember my brother's cell phone number,” Strunk recalled. “He was in town, but nobody knew the number. Nobody had it. I thought, ‘Why isn't there a directory for cell phones?’”

Strunk and partner Tracy Butler (who remains WDN's treasurer) soon discovered that while landline directory services received in excess of 10 billion calls annually, technical inefficiencies meant it sometimes took as long as three months to update a listing. Within a year, they launched WDN (originally dubbed Flatwire), and in 1999 Strunk filed a patent for a sharing network that would securely transmit contact data between providers and their respective subscribers, updated by users in real-time over the Internet.

“We thought it would be cool to have one global, shared network that all providers could get on to get a number from another provider, without compromising their database,” Strunk said. “A real-time, accurate system would be incredibly useful for the wireless industry.”

Incredibly useful and incredibly lucrative. The Pierz Group projects that wireless 411 could generate $2 billion in revenues by 2008.

“Directory service is the premium of all premium revenues — you get $1.25 for giving out a number,” Strunk said. “If carriers would only share their data, they all would make more money.”

WDN's solution operates by providing mobile phone numbers and subscriber information through call centers, Web-enabled applications, online directory sites and Web portal partnerships. The parties requesting information get charged, with the revenues split between carriers; network operators also can set their own premium prices for sending ComNotes and brand the WDN service through a consumer Web interface. The solution additionally offers users personalized recovery/backup phone book services and global text messaging search/send capabilities. And they can also update or change personal information — adding a temporary contact number, for example, or opting in or out of the overall directory as circumstances warrant.

“What's great about that is if I'm in South Africa, I can get a phone number in my own language,” Strunk said. “Now I can get numbers anywhere, in real-time. We enable consumers to manage their own listing information. It's their information — they should be able to control how it's used or when it's used or updated.”

Kathleen Pierz, The Pierz Group's managing partner, is as high on WDN's solution as her focus group.

“The technology fascinates me,” she said. “This idea of either listed or not listed was invented in the 1950s, when people only had a single phone. Now, with multiple numbers and accounts, there are 21 ways you can reach me. With [WDN's service], if I want to call you back, I will — if not, I won't. It's that simple.”

Qsent's solution, by contrast, is even simpler. According to the terms of the CTIA's proposal, the company will hold exclusive rights to subscriber information, parsing data to operator services only when a user calls 411 and specifically asks for a subscriber's number. Operators cannot store or maintain a list of the numbers in the database, nor will a print or electronic directory ever be created apart from Qsent's own database.

No one doubts the security or functionality of Qsent's solution, but Strunk said its potential for generating carrier revenues lags far behind what WDN is offering.

“The wireless industry has been dilly-dallying for three years on this,” he said. “They lost billions in revenue during that time. Now they plan to launch a system that falls short of where it needs to go.”

The question of why the CTIA selected Qsent over any of its rivals is difficult if not impossible to answer. Most, if not all, the high-ranking CTIA officials in place during the original wireless 411 RFP process have since left the organization to make way for new CEO Steve Largent and his staff.

In an interview with Wireless Review, John Walls, current CTIA vice president for public affairs, said he was not familiar with WDN or its solution. But he did say that respondents to The Pierz Group study may hold unrealistic expectations for what a mobile directory can and cannot accommodate.

“The service, as it's been proposed by the industry, is the most practical way to offer wireless 411,” Walls said. “Testing a scenario in a vacuum as to what people would like and what the existing wireless community can actually produce are two different things. There might be ways more preferred by consumers, but at the same time, there might be repercussions that could change the ways companies do business, and that could become very expensive in its own right.”

Others in the wireless community question whether WDN is truly ready for prime time.

“They're not what I would call a credible, carrier-grade solution right now,” said Mark Plakias, senior analyst with Opus Research. “I think why Kathleen [Pierz] is high on them is they have a set of functionality features that are responsive to her view of permissions and controls that would drive a higher opt-in rate. But that plus a buck fifty will get you a small coffee.”

However, Plakias did support the basic principles governing WDN's solution.

“I want all the numbers in my address book in the network — essentially, a personal 411,” he said. “That's going to require a Web interface, and it's also a really good touch-point for a number of identity management-related tasks, including the ideas of opting in or call forwarding. The most attractive candidate for that kind of advanced contact management is potentially a network address book kind of product.”

But for now, WDN remains effectively shut out of wireless 411 in the U.S. The company will now pursue other markets, including Canada, as well as commercial partners such as Yellow Pages directories, which operate independently of service providers. Strunk said he's also considering a private Web site for consumer listings.

“We're not taking the hardline approach that we don't want to help out,” Strunk said. “We can offer a solution to enhance Qsent's — our patent covers the whole ball of wax. We want to be part of it. We spent six years building this system, and we're ready to go.”