WAP And The Art Of Mobile Maintenance

Most of us use the net for sending and receiving mails, for browsing, or for simply having fun. We also know how it all comes to an end; when you disconnect. That's about all an internet can give you in the way of everyday solutions. However, with the advent of Wireless Access Protocol (WAP), the Net has become far more flexible for users. WAP is a protocol that lets you connect to the Internet using your mobile phone. Just imagine viewing a Business Standard on your Nokia 7110 while on the road for buying online, accessing a local Web site for news, traffic jams or "Rasta Rokhos".

WAP has been officially christened in 1997. A team comprising of Motorola, Nokia, Ericsson and Phone.com joined hands to develop this common protocol, in response to a tender floated by a US network operator, Omnipoint, for the supply of mobile information services. It was Omnipoint's disinclination to choose an individual technique that caused the companies to develop a common standard. The original WAP specification was to provide a standard method for small, limited resource devices such as cellular telephones, to access the Internet. Today, the WAP Forum has almost 250 members.

WAP is works with any mobile phone, as well as existing wireless services such as Short Message Service (SMS), Circuit Switched Data, Unstructured Supplementary Services Data and General Packet Radio Service (GPRS), mobile network standards such as Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA), Global System for Mobiles (GSM), or Universal Mobile Telephone System (UMTS).

WAP meets up with all cellular standards and is even backed by major world leaders in wireless services including AT&T Wireless and NTT DoCoMo. In addition you can use it with multiple input terminals such as keypads, keyboards, touch-screens and styluses. All this means that it is not network, application or terminal specific.

WAP services proves to be expensive for users who browse sites or applications, which provide higher levels of interactivity or a great selection of information. To start with Companies are not incorporating WAP into consumer-oriented phones. The few lucky ones are the High-end phones. As such, the consumer market still depends on SMS (Short messaging System) mode of communication. Wireless Application Protocol is yet to trickle down through the product range to become a standard feature. As a result market penetration will be effected. Given all these factors, mass market Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) support is not expected to arise until 2001 at the earliest. It demands larger screen sizes and more memory, which means more costs incurred to produce a WAP handset. This results in higher mobile phone prices.

WAP has generated its own genre of companies. They include mobile phone companies with WAP departments, companies providing WAP services, solutions and applications, marketing and advertising companies with their own m.communications units. Ogilvy has its own, m.Ogilvy.com to bridge the gap between branding and transaction. Strategic tie-ups are happening globally to launch into the m-commerce area. Sunday Communications based in Hong Kong, has tied-up with Phone.com to launch an M-commerce portal. In Japan, Sony and NTT DoCoMo are being talked about as is Sony and Palm. India too is feeling its own WAP revolution.

WAP has also induced new forms of business Retailing. Mobile Commerce, the effective delivery of electronic commerce to the user. Using wireless technology it is expected to provide the advantages of localisation and regionalisation. For instance, if your attention is called to a product or service, buy with your mobile phone and pay with it. The mobile phone is the newest form of retailing.

Terminal and Infrastructure manufacturers, Operators / Carriers / Service Providers, Software houses, Content providers and companies developing services and applications for mobile devices are the broad areas of firms working in the WAP field. Predictions for the wireless Internet market are not substantial to say the least. The Strategies Group predicts that there will be more than 530 million wireless subscribers by 2001. The year 2004 will have seen the one billion mark being breached.

Like any new technology, WAP still has a few bugs. Configuring WAP phones for new WAP services is still difficult. For one, phone technology has to catch up. Secondly, mobile phones that support WAP are limited a few top-end models. Don't rush into a WAP enabled phone, let the technology stabilise. From the user perspective, so far experimental WAP services are available in Hyderabad, Mumbai, Bangalore, Calcutta and Delhi.