WAP The World in Your Pocket

Remember
the time you wanted to find out Tendulkar’s current score
while you were travelling to your office. The long frustrating
wait in the queue at the railway ticket booking counter when you
sighed, "Alas! If only I could surf the Internet now for
some cool sites!" Also, the times when you desperately
wanted to sell off the shares of a sinking company right there
and then caught between a major traffic jam between Andheri and
Bandra in Mumbai.

Here
comes the mobile phone, which can take care of all these
specific needs and much more. Soon, you will be able to
literally "click and run", once companies start
offering you Wireless Application Protocol (WAP)-based services
through mobile phones. The greatest draw would be that one would
be free to roam and yet be a cellphone away from the great
information library and communication system called the
Internet.

This is different from the
current situation where you have to connect the mobile phone to
a laptop and dial from the laptop to access the Internet. With
WAP services, you will not need to have a computer beside you,
as the mobile phone will act as a small pocket-sized computer,
which will effortlessly connect to the WAP content out there in
the Internet through the wireless network of your cellular
operator. Of course, the cellphone used has to be different from
what you use today in order to accommodate the Internet on it.
And needless to say, this might be a costly service, as even the
ordinary cellular service on which WAP service will run, is
still not within the reach of most segments of the Indian
society in terms of price.

What
Is WAP?

What
Exactly Is WAP Services?

WAP services can be any information-, entertainment-, or
e-commerce-related service offered using WAP as a platform and
media to store and deliver the voice, data, or video to mobile
terminals. From a cellular service provider to a newspaper to a
flower vendor, anybody can provide WAP services. All that is to
be done is to host the WAP content or application through
Internet. It is similar to hosting web content. The only
exception here is that the content travels the last mile to a
cellphone. A piece of middleware called WAP gateway, installed
in the mobile service provider’s network, translates the
Internet content into a form that can be received by a cellular
phone.

Though WAP services are
quite new, there are some well-known WAP service providers.
Cellular companies like NTT DoCoMo and Radio Linja already
provide these services in Japan and Sweden respectively. News
agencies like CNN and Reuters also have WAP content that can be
accessed through cellphones. And recently there are number of
WAP portals coming up as well. One of them is Waply.com. Another
is Yahoo! Mobile.

One can access these
services through a local mobile call if the local cellular
service provider has a WAP gateway installed in his network.
Since Indian cellular companies have not yet installed a WAP
gateway, the only way to avail WAP services is by making a
mobile call to a gateway somewhere in Sweden, Germany or
Finland. However, Indian operators are known to be testing out
WAP solutions. It might not be too long for a WAP gateway to be
up and running locally in India.

What Services
Are Available?

The
services available through a WAP phone–apart from voice calls
and e-mails–include access to:

• Databases
  like hotel guides, restaurant guides, telephone directory,
  recipes, dictionary

• n Transaction
  services like ticket reservations, mobile banking, purchase
  of consumer goods like books and music CDs, credit card bill
  enquiry

• Entertainment
  services like karaoke, FM on-air messages, network games,
  and astrology

• Other
  services like news, weather forecasts, transportation
  information, tourist information Similar WAP services can
  be provided by WAP service providers in India. From current
  train timings to proactive sports scores to reservation of the
  elusive railway ticket, several valued-added services can be
  provided in the Indian scenario. With many of these already in
  HTML it should not be too hard to translate them into Wireless
  Mark-up Language (WML)–a language the microbrowser in the WAP
  phone can understand. The Indian strength in software can come
  handy here.

  When Will WAP
  Services Be Available?
  
  The speed of WAP deployment will clearly depend on the
  availability of handset devices supporting WAP. Though quantity
  shipment of Nokia 7110 started from middle of last year, it is
  still not available in many regions such as the Indian
  subcontinent. However, shipments to India are expected next
  month. Also other handset manufacturers like Ericsson, Motorola,
  and Alcatel have showcased yet-to-be launched WAP models
  recently.

  The
  other worry is the cost aspect. Since receiving of WAP services
  requires a larger screen size and more memory to accommodate the
  content, it costs more to produce a WAP handset. Until WAP
  services establish considerable volumes, the initial phones are
  expected to cost high.

  The light of hope comes
  from the development of the network-end products. While problems
  persist in the WAP client (the WAP phone), there is already a
  lot of activity on the network side. A number of WAP gateways–the
  middleware which lifts the information from an Internet server,
  processes it, and sends it to the WAP phone–are already
  available in the market.
  

  The
  WAP Difference

  While
  developing WAP technology, products, and services, the WAP
  Forum took the paradigm of the Web and the wireless
  communications technologies–which it was trying to marry.
  While it tried to inculcate the rich features of the Web, it
  also had to take into account the limitations of wireless
  communications technologies.

  Bandwidth was
  a major issue. GSM, the cellular telephony standard used in
  India, could transmit data at a speed of only 9.6 Kbps.
  Other popular standards like CDMA and DECT also had similar
  speed limitations. Mobility meant that the mobile device had
  to be small enough to fit into a pocket. This put a
  constraint on the size of the display screen. Also the time
  available to browse and surf when one is on the move is
  limited, thus content has to be minimal, simple, and quickly
  accessible.

  WAP utilizes
  the client server philosophy. A WAP session requires a
  mobile phone with a microbrowser in it and a WAP gateway
  connected to the mobile network. The subscriber with the WAP
  phone first dials into the WAP service. Once online, he uses
  the in-built microbrowser to make a request in Wireless
  Mark-up Language (WML), a variant of HTML, developed bearing
  in mind the various characteristics of wireless
  communication, such as the bandwidth limitations and the
  screen size.

  The request
  goes to a WAP gateway, which retrieves the information from
  an Internet server in HTML or WML format. If it is in HTML
  format, a filter in the gateway translates it into WML. This
  gateway then sends this information to the WAP client using
  existing bearer services such as SMS or CSD.

  Some of them like Nokia,
  Phone.com, and Ericsson are giving away WAP toolkits to
  application developers. WAP gateway developers like Nokia and
  Ericsson have signed up several mobile network operators,
  including some in India, to try WAP services and gain market
  feedback.

  Though companies
  developing WAP services still have a long way to go, the initial
  WAP services like e-mail, information guides, and news headline
  services, can be provided using the first series of
  specifications that come with WAP version 1.1. Other advanced
  services will be enabled with future versions of WAP. In fact,
  some proactive cellular service providers like Radio Linja of
  Sweden and Swisscom of Switzerland have already gone ahead with
  their services using WAP version 1.1. Indian operators like
  AirTel, Essar Cellphone, Fascel, and Hutchison Max are known to
  be testing out WAP services. Essar Cellphone is providing Smart
  SMS by using Nokia’s Artus Messaging platform, which can also
  accommodate WAP services. However, the availability of WAP
  services in India will depend largely on market demand and the
  technical feasibility of WAP vis-a-vis the existing cellular
  technologies that the Indian operators use.

  WAP: The
  Personal Tool
  
  As and when WAP services start and gain maturity, it will enable
  several interesting activities for a mobile person. The modern
  corporate man today spends a lot of time commuting or simply
  waiting. If one has a personal companion such as a cellphone
  with ready access to information and entertainment, this time
  will be spent in a more worthwhile manner. With WAP, the mobile
  phone will compete with the personal computer at home and office
  to conduct routine activities such as banking, ticketing, online
  shopping, and checking for information such as news, weather
  reports, yellow pages, and train/flight/bus schedules. But, on
  the move, the cellphone is likely to rule the roost.

  All said and done, the
  popularization of WAP services will depend on how affordable it
  can get. It would mean several marketing packages and newer
  tariff models. Initially, WAP will be too costly for the
  majority, at least in countries like India. But those who can
  afford it will most likely find it valuable. WAP: The
  Corporate Tool
  
  WAP could affect a company in two ways–as a new way of
  delivering services or an enabler of the "anytime,
  anywhere" connected workforce. As said earlier, anybody can
  provide WAP services. Today, companies realize the value of
  their customers’ time. The need to reach out to customers
  anywhere and anytime cuts across industries. In this regard,
  companies can have the ultimate medium in wireless connectivity.
  In the case of a popular movie theatre, WAP services would
  provide value to its customers by enabling them to find out the
  current movies through the mobile phone and book a ticket or
  cancel another one. An airlines company could be hosting a WAP
  server that proactively updates the flight schedules round the
  clock informing consumers of any reschedule or delay.

  WAP services can, on the
  other hand, make the internal process of a company more
  efficient and save on expenses by allowing the workforce to
  connect to its intranet from a cellphone, which is much cheaper
  than a laptop. The corporate applications that can be carried
  out through a WAP phone include order entry, product
  availability tracking, deal management, job dispatch, remote
  monitoring, and corporate e-mail.

  The bottomline is that
  while WAP services could initially burn one’s pocket for quite
  some time on the personal level, to a corporation it could mean
  newer revenue streams.