Are You WAP-Certified?

A recent Gartner Group study predicted that more than 95% of new mobile phones will be WAP-enabled by 2005. But will interoperability challenges defuse the WAP explosion?

AnywhereYouGo.com found that more than 25% of online WAP applications have coding errors serious enough to render them unusable. To ensure that WAP apps perform as expected, they must be tested using multiple devices and gateways. But with about 30 WAP-enabled phones and more than six gateways already in use today, developers and IT managers face a significant burden. Like any other standard, WAP is open to a fair amount of interpretation, so it's possible that one vendor's WAP hardware and software might not be 100% compatible with another's. Developers also have been unable to formally test WAP apps across the multitude of different gateways, devices and platforms available.

But Scott Goldman, WAP Forum CEO, said interoperability problems will disappear as soon as this year. "Interoperability is always going to be a challenge, but it is certainly less of a problem now," Goldman said. "We expect the problem to go away very shortly because we have implemented a very clear certification process for those devices and content."

The WAP Forum's certification process, begun in March 2000, allows vendors to submit devices to a third party for testing. It creates a "reference pool" of devices to test other devices against. For example, a gateway manufacturer with several different handsets to test against a gateway can submit that gateway to be tested against the pool of available handsets.

"This way, you get a statistically valid, very reliable indication that your gateway is compliant with all these other devices," Goldman said. "Once your gateway passes that test, we consider it certified, and you're allowed to use the WAP logo on that gateway. Same thing applies with handsets."

Testing is optional, but Goldman said most manufacturers will want to go through the process.

"It will be the symbol of assurance, almost the 'Good Housekeeping' seal of approval, that will indicate to buyers that they are buying a phone that is compliant with all the other WAP devices and gateways," he said.

A WAP logo on a site, a gateway and a handset shows that they all have met the same standards and will operate with each other.

"In the past, if you were Motorola and you wanted to test a handset against the gateway, you had to go to Phone.com, Nokia and all the others," Goldman said. "It was a very cumbersome process."

Other testing programs, such as AnywhereYouGo.com's independent WAP-app testing lab, aren't authorized to certify gateways or devices.

"Anything that helps advance the cause of WAP, we are in favor of," Goldman said. "But nobody else can certify things as being WAP-compliant. We want to make sure we control it so we can ensure the integrity of the WAP market."