Internet content opens up to wireless

During the last few months, wireless data advocates have attributed the success of NTT DoCoMo's i-mode data service to the amount of content sites that i-mode users can access. Those industry observers have recommended that rather than offer only a handful of wirelessly accessible Internet sites, operators must try to offer the entire Internet to wireless data users.

That has been a challenging proposition because content providers must be convinced to rewrite their Internet sites for delivery to wireless users with small-screened devices. That challenge is becoming less daunting, however, with the advent of software that easily transforms Internet content for wireless devices, sometimes on the fly. Internet sites and content aggregators already use this software, and now wireless operators are expressing an interest in implementing it.

OmniSky, which can be regarded as a wireless ISP, launched its service nationally earlier this month, wholesaling minutes from AT&T Wireless' cellular digital packet data network. The service offers access to 2200 content sites and essentially the entire Internet.

That is made possible with Aether Systems' ScoutWeb software.

The software allows a customer such as OmniSky to create rules that tell the server how to process content for the user's device. OmniSky customers use the Palm V, so its administrators write rules for the most commonly visited Web sites with instructions to strip out color and ads and reduce the size and resolution of graphics. For OmniSky users with Wireless Application Protocol-enabled devices, it also could write rules that would strip out graphics for those sites, delivering only text.

"Once you create a rule, even though the content changes every day, the format of the site doesn't," said Larry Roshfeld, senior vice president of products for Aether.

Some other solutions have offered tools to manually change HTML for hand-held devices. But such a solution requires a manual reformatting of content each time content is added or changed. That makes it difficult to use for destinations such as news sites, which continually change content.

The ScoutWeb software rules are fairly simple to write. At OmniSky, the content editors who know HTML write the rules.

The software also allows users to create a generic set of rules. So if a wireless user tries to view a site for which specific rules haven't been set, the customer still can receive information.

"It's something between usable and pretty good," said Dave Rensin, chief technology officer for OmniSky. The site won't look ideal, but it's better than sending users a message that says the site is unavailable, he said.

OmniSky does have a limitation, though. It can't deliver information from sites entirely written using Java. Nonetheless, using Aether's software allows OmniSky users to access 80% to 90% of all Web sites, Rensin said IBM has a similar software solution. IBM's WebSphere Transcoding Publisher transforms HTML into variations of itself, depending on the customer's device. IBM's target customers are wireless operators, ISPs such as OmniSky and handset manufacturers.

IBM is seeing interest from wireless operators that want to implement their own servers with the software so that their customers can reach virtually any site.

"Initially, operators were working with [a specific] weather site or financial site - it was limited," said Jim Fletcher, program director with IBM. By implementing such software, operators can easily open countless additional sites. Rather than see end users type in URLs and get turned away, operators would rather enable those sites themselves.

IBM currently is running a test program with Sabre and Nokia, which allows Nokia phone users to make changes to airline flights and receive flight updates from airlines on their phones.