Wireless Application Protocol

What is WAP

 The Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) is a hot topic that has been widely hyped in the mobile industry and outside of it. WAP is simply a protocol- a standardized way that a mobile phone talks to a server installed in the mobile phone network. It is amazing how in just six months, it has become imperative for all Information Technology companies in Nordic countries and beyond to have a WAP division. Many many advertising agencies and "dot.coms" have announced WAP services.

end-users on the digital networks.

WAP creates new business opportunities for corporations by providing a new channel for existing services and the possibility for totally new services that can reach customers 24 hours a day wherever they are. Since WAP is an open protocol for wireless messaging, it provides the same technology to all vendors regardless of the network system. This means that there will be WAP compliant terminals from several manufacturers. Also the server technology is open, so operators and companies can select from a wide range of products. The common standard offers economies of scale, encouraging manufacturers, application developers and content providers to invest in developing WAP compatible products. Companies can benefit from WAP by offering end-users new mobile services that make everyday life much more convenient and are easily accessed by a mobile phone. The telecommunications industry avoids overlapping costs and investments thanks to the common, open platform and tool for wireless messaging. Operators can differentiate themselves by launching new and intriguing services. Developers and content providers are able to access all protocols and carriers with one product.

Key WAP application categories include:

• Wireless access to personal information: Wireless device users can access their e-mail, calendars, 'to do' lists, and even screen text headers for their voice mail messages.

• Wireless access to Internet content: Consumers benefit from immediate interactive access to the information they need at that moment.

• Wireless access to Corporate IT-systems (origin servers) and Extranets. Corporations can offer new channels for their services and also create totally new services for their mobile customers.

• Intelligent Telephony Services: Carriers can offer their customers secure access to their personal and other customer-related information.

The WAP protocol is being developed into WAP version 2.0, enhanced further by the increasing number of new WAP Forum members. WAP will be based on the latest existing technologies and the protocol aims to support them as quickly as possible. Market feedback will heavily influence future development.

WAP System

There are three major parts of any WAP-enabled system, namely the WAP Gateway, the HTTP Web Server, and the WAP Device  itself, which is interacting with the WAP Gateway, as Figure 1 illustrates below. The WAP Gateway sends WML- formatted content to the WAP device, whilst the WAP gateway must communicate with the Web server using the Web's primary protocol, HTTP.

All Web servers can communicate with a variety of information sources, using a number of different integration tools and protocols, for example a Web server can serve pages of information that are generated by tools such as Active Server Pages (ASP), ColdFusion, or PHP. Database integration is achieved using protocols such as CGI (the Common Gateway Interface) or, more likely,ODBC, as Figure 2 illustrates.

WAP is hot for several reasons:

1.      It provides a standardized way of linking the Internet to mobile phones, thereby linking two of the hottest industries anywhere.

2.      Its founder members include the major wireless vendors of Nokia, Ericsson and Motorola, plus a newcomer Phone.com.

3.      By April 2000, the WAP Forum had over 350 member companies.

4.      Mobile information services, a key application for WAP, have not been as successful as many network operators expected. WAP is seen as a way to rectify this situation.

WAP also has its detractors and controversies:

         i.            It is very difficult to configure WAP phones for new WAP services, with 20 or so different parameters needing to be entered to gain access to a WAP service.

       ii.            Compared with the installed base of Short Message Service (SMS) compliant phones, the relative number of handsets supporting WAP is tiny.

      iii.            WAP is a protocol that runs on top of an underlying bearer. None of the existing GSM bearers for WAP- the Short Message Service (SMS), Unstructured Supplementary Services Data (USSD) and Circuit Switched Data (CSD) are optimized for WAP.

     iv.            The WAP standard is incomplete, with key elements such as Push (proactive sending of information to mobile devices) and wireless telephony (updating address reports and the like) included in the WAP 1.2, standardized in late 1999 and first expected to be implemented in the Spring of 2000. 

       v.            There are many WAP Gateway vendors out there competing against each other with largely the same standardized product. This has led to consolidation such as the pending acquisition of APiON by Phone.com.

     vi.            Other protocols such as SIM Application Toolkit and Mobile Station Application Execution Environment (MexE) are respectively already widely supported or designed to supercede WAP.

WAP services are expected to be expensive to use since the tendency is to be on-line for a long Circuit Switched Data (CSD) call as features such as interactivity and selection of more information are used by the end user. Without specific tariff initiatives, there are likely to be some surprised WAP users when they see their mobile phone bill for the first time after starting using WAP.

Key WAP application categories include:

• Wireless access to personal information: Wireless device users can access their e-mail, calendars, 'to do' lists, and even screen text headers for their voice mail messages.

• Wireless access to Internet content: Consumers benefit from immediate interactive access to the information they need at that moment.

• Wireless access to Corporate IT-systems (origin servers) and Extranets. Corporations can offer new channels for their services and also create totally new services for their mobile customers.

• Intelligent Telephony Services: Carriers can offer their customers secure access to their personal and other customer-related information.

The WAP protocol is being developed into WAP version 2.0, enhanced further by the increasing number of new WAP Forum members. WAP will be based on the latest existing technologies and the protocol aims to support them as quickly as possible. Market feedback will heavily influence future development.