Spotlight on WAP

WAP has received a lot of buzz lately. How will it fit into your wireless Internet plan, and what will its future be?

Like a message in the sky, WAP has become a beacon to savvy consumers and technology-driven providers alike. Its ability to migrate to 3G and enable new multimedia applications has the industry giddy with the possibilities. But will WAP be a hero or a zero to your network?

According to Donald Joong, Ericsson WAP product unit lead technical engineer, WAP will champion 3G migration. Furthermore, Joong said as 3G technology is deployed and readily available, WAP will evolve with 3G networks to take advantage of the increase in bandwidth and enable more applications featuring media, audio and video.

"Everybody's concerned about the impact of WAP on the network and initially there won't be a great impact because the users will not be high in number," John Vamvakas, Ericsson WAP product unit sales, marketing and business development manager, said. "Operators are spending a lot of time looking at the cost of WAP roll-out, and they are missing the boat in the sense that ... WAP is a great platform to figure out what your users want."

U.S. Cellular is one of those providers looking at how to use WAP. According to Jay Quinlan, U.S. Cellular director of technology development, there are a few challenges with rolling out WAP. First, today's phones don't have keyboards, and the screens aren't big enough. Also, the network architecture has to change because of the gateways.

"A lot has been written lately about security issues; what could happen should a hacker get in and spam your network or take it down," he said. "You need to look at building your IP network separate for this service. Not only will it be a major cost, but it's also a major engineering undertaking. Ultimately, you're designing an entirely new network specifically for this."

Quinlan said the most-critical factor that will affect Internet browsing isn't WAP but the increased data speed that will accompany 3G networks.

Carlton Hill, BellSouth Wireless director of Internet initiatives, said WAP will evolve with new technology, but might not be the star standard that many think it could be.

"XML is probably where we're all headed so everything's written in XML and can be accessed by all transfer methods," she said. "That's not to say that WAP has a short lifespan. WAP is an evolving set of protocols."

BellSouth plans to roll out its WML launch later this summer.

Who's Afraid of Interoperability?
There have been both whispers and shouts about WAP's interoperability challenges. Interoperability issues are "coming," Quinlan said.

"The good thing about WAP is that it's a standard," he said. "Where you might find challenges is with people who don't follow the WAP standard, and there are a few out there."

But Quinlan, like other providers, is well aware that if you wait for standards to be solidified before introducing a new offering to the market, you'll probably be left behind your competitors. Even manufacturers that jump ahead of the standard usually end up conforming sooner or later. Most important, there is no slowing of the momentum to build on the WAP standard. It is expected to evolve from version 1.1 to 1.2 (more enhancements and applications such as SMS) and then to 1.3. Simultaneously, manufacturers will continue to work on interoperability issues.

"There are always going to be incompatibilities," Vamvakas said. "The WAP standard, although it's open to anybody, is open to interpretation. That's a natural thing you experience with any standard — there's going to be some incompatibilities from different manufacturers."

Providers' WAP worries, he said, should be restricted to terminal availability and form, and having the content to differentiate yourself from the competition.

Future of WAP
In the wireless world, standards are important, and it's important to have a future-proof solution. Proprietary solutions such as NTT DoCoMo and Phone.com's may be here today and gone tomorrow.

"I-Mode could compete with WAP," Vamvakas said. "DoCoMo has a strategic initiative to make it a standard. It's going to be a challenge to make it a standard (worldwide) because you have two camps today: DoCoMo, Phone.com and WAP. If WAP handsets do not find their way to the CDMA/TDMA world, then you might see fragmentation."

Fragmentation would mean that providers wouldn't have a seamless solution for end users.

"The operators that have the Phone.com solution are asking the WAP providers — Motorola, Nokia and Ericsson — how can you make your WAP solution backward or forward compatible with the Phone.com solution?" Vamvakas said. "Phone.com goes to a GSM operator that has a WAP gateway and asks the same question: Will our WAP handsets work with your HTML content?"

In the future, WAP, HTML, the Phone.com solution and i-Mode may even look alike. It won't matter to subscribers.

"The customer could care less how accessing the Internet occurs, whether it occurs through WML markup language or HTML markup language or proprietary Microsoft browsers and Sun Java downloads," Hill said. "That's just the access mode. The things that will be different in everybody's wireless Internet-access service that will differentiate those services in the eyes of the customer is what applications and content sets are available through that access."

But is WAP taking the focus off applications?

"Right now, I don't think anyone's really focusing a lot of time on applications," Vamvakas said. "If you look at the commercial offerings now, they're all very similar. Once you get 3G with larger bandwidth at a premium price, providers are going to be forced to say, 'What kinds of applications are we going to put on this expensive plate?'"

And it might be more cost-effective and network-efficient to run some of these new applications over WAP. For example, if an application is text-based but time critical, the WAP pipe is sufficient.

"Something that a lot of people don't understand is that the real WAP standard, WML, has yet to be implemented," Hill said. "The wireless Internet access products out there right now are actually using HTML as the protocol conversion."

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WAP & 3G

Q: How will WAP work with 3G networks?

A: The original constraints WAP was designed for — intermittent coverage, small screens, low power consumption, wide scaleability over bearers and devices, and 1-handed operation — still are valid in 3G networks.

The bandwidth required by applications that users want will steadily increase. This means there still is a need to optimize the use of device and network resources for wireless environments. WAP will evolve optimized support for multimedia applications and continue to be relevant. If WAP is successful in mass markets on 2.5G networks, 3G networks may be needed purely for capacity relief with the same applications.

Source: WAP Forum