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A rough guide to WAPIf the researchers are to be believed, by 2003 there'll be more people owning WAP compatible phones than those who own PCs! WAP phones are thus intended to help their owners easily surf the Net. Their ability to be 'Internet ready' is courtesy of a facility called WAP (Wireless Application Protocol). Where has WAP suddenly sprung from? The simple answer is that WAP is mobile communications initiative spawned by the Big Three - Nokia, Ericsson and Motorola - in conjunction with a less well-known Californian software outfit called Unwired Planet. The latter has subsequently renamed itself Phone.com (www.phone.com). In keeping with traditional industry practice a pressure group - the WAP Forum (www.wapforum.org)- has sprung up to promote this particular technology. Currently the Forum has over 400 members drawn from all sectors of the mobile communications industry including those responsible for 75 per cent of the world's mobile phone output. In the list are major IT names like IBM and H-P (Hewlett-Packard); network operators like Cellnet and One2One; systems integrators like Logica Aldiscon and Sema; and even the Big three's major includes rival handset manufacturers including Alcatel, Qualcomm, Sagem, Samsung, Siemens and Matsushita (Panasonic). Why is WAP
already so popular with handset vendors? From the manufacturers' viewpoint the greatest attraction to WAP will be that it creates a truly global market. So while here in the UK you'll be using a GSM handset equipped with a WAP browser, in Korea and the USA they'll have WAP phones running on CDMA networks and the Japanese already have WAP handsets working over their PDC networks. WAP will even work with some of the less well-known mobile networks like AMPS and TDMA in the States. Better still WAP won't be confined to just mobile handsets - it can be built into sophisticated pagers and into terminals for dedicated data networks such based on Tetra (like Dolphin) and RAM Mobile Data. Plus WAP flexible enough that you can put a WAP browser into a portable computer - like the PalmPilot from 3Com - and then make the mobile network connection using a relatively ordinary mobile phone. So what's the catch? What’s the biggest problem? Speed The main reason why WAP and not HTML will be used is lack of bandwidth or to put it another way, today's mobile networks are simply too slow to support complex Web pages. Take GSM networks as an example. Most existing networks are restricted to a speed of 9.6 Kbit/s - which works out at around four times slower than a decent modem and roughly six times slower than an ISDN line. As Nokia has proved, it’s actually possible to run 14.4 Kbit/s over existing GSM networks. There’s two technologies which aim to cure this: - High Speed Circuit Switched Data (HSCSD) and GPRS (General Packet Radio Services). Similar moves are afoot with CDMA and TDMA (IS-136). The TDMA and GSM worlds are working jointly on EDGE (Enhanced Data rate for Global Evolution) this will offer data rates up to 384 kbit/s. On CDMA networks, Qualcomm has added a Mobile IP (Internet Protocol) capability to the existing basic packet data facility which runs at 14.4 Kbit/s. This is just the beginning. The mobile industry manufacturers have a major incentive to increase data speeds even further thanks to the ITU’s IMT-2000 (International Mobile Telecommunications 2000) standard. This standard calls for 144 Kbit/s while travelling at speed; 384 kbit/s at low speeds and 2 Mbit/s when stationery. Who seems to be leading so far? Here in the UK,
Nokia's WAP phone, the 7110, is shipping but rumours are there’s on 2,000 in
the country [4/12/99]. The 7110 has attempted to solve this problem with its
Navi roller bar which is the closet thing to a computer mouse yet in a portable
phone. With the 7110 once you've highlighted an option with the bar, pressing
down on the bar activates your selection just like clicking with a mouse.
Another time saving facility hidden within the 7110 is a facility called
Predictive Text which makes intelligent guesses as to which word you are typing
using the keypad. In fact, virtual all the major handset suppliers have licensed
this system - know as T9 - from Tegic so it should soon become a common
phenomenon. An alternative approach, however, is a touch sensitive screen which
enables the user to 'type' by tapping on a screen displayed keyboard with a
stylus. What’s this WWW:MMM thingey? The Big Three have banded together to create WWW:MMM - a marketing initiative for WAP. The name derives from Motorola's current penchant for turning things upside down (aka its Wings campaign). The thinking is along the same lines whereby approved GSM modems have been labelled with stickers bearing the likes of the Nokia OK logo, so any device licensing the WWW:MMM logo will have to be WAP compliant. Where's the incentive to create WAP services, then? WAP is effectively the Internet with all the fancy gubbins stripped out. It'll mean a complete change in the mindset for the way in which Internet based services are designed and constructed. If you look around today there are only a miniscule number of WAP based services in commercial operation. Nevertheless WAP will become the best mechanism for delivery information to the masses. It will therefore competing with all other mediums for conveying information - not just rival digital technologies like handheld computers but anything which displays a message to a wide audience. Here’s an example of the sort of thing you can expect from WAP which has been provided by the French mobile network operator, Cegetel. The latter claimed to be first to market with a service called e.medi@. Customers purchase an e.medi@ handset (based around WAP) and through it they can gain access their Internet email messages as well as financial, travel and traffic information. Cegetel's thinking is to use WAP to provide a mobile version of Minitel. In Britain an idea of the kind of WAP based offerings you can expect has been provided by Orange. Where's the killer ap? Location is a killer ap. The mobile network knows where your are located. It’s not the sort of precision provided by GPS but good enough. Imagine your are a salesman and you need to find a Chinese restaurant to entertain clients for lunch. You whip out your WAP enabled mobile phone. You then go to your favourite Internet site where you trust the restaurant reviews. You select Chinese. The site asks ‘current location’, you answer – yes. It then provides a list and then downloads a city map which highlights the location of the restaurants. Neat, huh? Is WAP the only player on the block? Well, no it isn't. An initiative which presents a direct challenge to WAP is from Microsoft which has joined forces with Qualcomm (the champion of cdmaone) to create a venture known as WirelessKnowledge. The latter organisation is headed by John Major, a former Qualcomm executive, whose stated position is that, “We [WirelessKnowledge] will offer device-independent access.” In the UK Microsoft’s technology is being championed by BT. Ó DollargateÔ Publishing |
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