WAP: The sound of data progress?

This appears to be true even in the once-rebellious wireless industry, where the four-month-old Wireless Applications Protocol (WAP) Forum is developing specifications to create industry standards for transmitting Internet content to wireless phones.

The group was founded by Ericsson, Nokia, Motorola and Unwired Planet. It was driven mostly by Unwired Planet's development of the hand-held device markup language (HDML), which is probably the closest thing the industry has seen to an overnight success recently. It was launched last year and immediately won over industry heavyweights, including cellular/PCS giant AT&T Wireless.

Now, the WAP Forum is trying to establish technology parameters for the wireless Internet access market, an opportunity so highly touted that it may propel and re-distribute the fortunes of not only the wireless segment but also the Internet services segment.

The development of this market long has been a goal of both industry segments but seemed very ambitious and elusive. Several factors, however, may make it a near-term reality, including the birth of HDML, the rapid growth of digital networks, the development of smart phones, and competitive pressure in both wireless and Internet services.

Standards for an emerging market The WAP Forum is pursuing an open standards framework for wireless Internet through a protocol specification that defines standards for Web microbrowsers, a scripting language similar to JavaScript called wireless markup language (WML), call control features and a functional communications stack.

The idea is to develop a proxy server that will easily convert interfaces to WML from HTML and HDML (Figure 1), and to build a total standard that interfaces to any of the wireless industry's hodge-podge of network transport technologies (Figure 2).

Although it met for the first time just a few months ago, the WAP Forum has an ambitious goal: to produce a final 1.0 version of its specification some time this spring, so that standardized products can be released soon after. The forum will then propose its WAP specification to other industry standards bodies for their approval.

"Until the specification is out, we can't get into the next phase, which is product rollout," says Jack Armstrong, director of product management at Spyglass, one of the major developers of microbrowsers for wireless Internet.

For the most part, product developers awaiting the specification should not have a great deal of complicated work ahead of them. Most will only have to add a conversion interface or connect to a proxy conversion server equipped with WML.

There is still some question about how soon that work can begin. The final specification had not been released as of late April, but forum members agreed that work was progressing. Forum members met en masse in both February and March. In February, the forum unveiled the original draft of the proposed specification set at the GSM World Congress in Cannes, France, in front of a large international audience. Participants also have been exchanging e-mails as they review and evaluate specification proposals.

"Everyone involved is keeping everyone else honest," says Armstrong. "The whole effort started with HDML, but it has moved beyond that, and everyone is getting a say in what's going to happen."

Everyone has a say Indeed, the strength of the WAP Forum's effort at this point is seemingly cohesive participation and movement from infrastructure and phone vendors, software and applications developers, and carriers-something past wireless data efforts have lacked.

In particular, a lack of targeted applications stalled the industry's initial embrace of cellular digital packet data. In the WAP effort, developers of messaging and content applications are playing a role from the very beginning.

"Internet-based applications can add significant value to wireless networks, and the WAP will enable us to bring standards-based solutions to a rapidly growing market," says Jukka Riivari, vice president of Internet solutions for Fujitsu Software's TeamWARE group. Fujitsu Software is a developer of shortmessage service and wireless e-mail servers and solutions.

Also, carrier involvement has been encouraging, according to WAP Forum members, with luminaries such as AT&T Wireless, BellSouth, SBC and others following the proceedings.

In fact, the WAP Forum has kept its proceedings as open to comment as possible. Copies of original draft specifications are available at the forum's Web site, www.wapforum.org, along with plenty of historical and membership information. In addition, forum members can enter password-guarded portions of the site to file comments and suggestions regarding the specification.

Broad willingness to support the WAP effort is a good omen for the specification's adoption. However, it is probably too early to call the WAP Forum an unqualified success. History has shown that even the telecom industry's most favored and well-meaning standards efforts can get derailed by complexity of purpose, vendor squabbling and lengthy debate.

And although the volume of controversy surrounding WAP has been extremely low, some in the industry question the forum's ability to narrow down the wide variety of suggestions from a large membership into a detailed specification within just a few months of the forum's conception.

"The way people were talking, I thought we might be done by now," says one forum member.

"Everyone got excited about what was going on, and they may have overstated their ability to do something this spring," says a non-member who has kept up with the forum's proceedings through colleagues. "That doesn't mean it's not a good idea, though, and when the spec comes out, I'll support it."

Still, most of the industry seems to have full faith in the WAP Forum and its ability to produce the specification set.

"The forum has a realistic view about what can be accomplished in a 1.0 spec," says Armstrong. "There will always be more details needed, but the idea here is to produce enough to work on products."