The Future of WAP

The Future of WAP 

The tremendous surge of interest and development in the area of wireless data in recent times has caused worldwide operators, infrastructure and terminal manufacturers, and content developers to collaborate on an unprecedented scale, in an area notorious for the diversity of standards and protocols. The collaborative efforts of the WAP Forum have devised and continue to develop a set of protocols that provide a common environment for the development of advanced telephony services and Internet access for the wireless market. If the

WAP protocols were to be as successful as transmission control protocol- (TCP)/Internet protocol (IP), the boom in mobile communications would be phenomenal. Indeed, the WAP browser should do for mobile Internet what Netscape did for the Internet. As mentioned earlier, industry players from content developers to operators can explore the vast opportunity that WAP presents. As a fixed-line technology, the Internet has proved highly successful in reaching the homes of millions worldwide. However, mobile users until now have been forced to accept relatively basic levels of functionality, over and above voice communications and are beginning to demand the industry to move from a fixed to a mobile environment, carrying the functionality of a fixed environment with it. Initially, services are expected to run over the well-established SMS bearer, which will dictate the nature and speed of early applications. Indeed, GSM currently does not offer the data rates that would allow mobile multimedia and Web browsing. With the advent of GPRS, which aimed at increasing the data rate to 115 kbps, as well as other emerging high-bandwidth bearers, the reality of access speeds equivalent or higher to that of a fixed-line scenario become ev ermore believable. GPRS is seen by many as the perfect partner for WAP, with its distinct time slots serving to manage data packets in a way that prevents users from being penalized for holding standard circuit-switched connections.