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Wireless Application Protocol. a set of
specifications that describes how portable wireless devices such as phones
and pdas should access the internet and communicate with each other.
Wap was
the first credible attempt to create standards for net access by such
devices. The first wap phones were launched with great fanfares in Europe in
early 2000, offering access to basic news and other information. Many more
advanced wap services followed, characterised largely by the indifference of
users towards them.
Wap uses its own local communications mechanisms
but is designed to work closely with existing internet standards, speaking
fluently to web transport protocols such as http and tcp / ip
and reading
many kinds of web content. Wml, a language related to html
that is designed
for handheld wireless devices, makes the job of creating wap-compatible
versions of websites a comparatively easy one, but the limitations of the
wireless technology and the physical shortcomings of the devices make it
hard to replicate the advanced features of modern websites. In the short
term, high-bandwidth content such as video will be beyond wap's reach,
although the advent of 3G networks may eventually make access to it
possible. But personal banking, games, timetables, cinema and restaurant
bookings and so on are all within wap's reach.
Despite a level of hype not seen since the early days of the web,
few of the services on offer so far have proved to be useful, and studies
show that as little as 3% of owners of wap enabled phones actually make use
of them. This has led many one-time supporters of the technology to become
its harshest critics. But much of their criticism is based on a misguided
belief that high-speed services such as gprs and umts are replacements for
wap, rather than complementary carriers for wap-based content. it is true
that wap is currently slow and difficult to use, but its usefulness will
become more apparent as bandwidth increases and the usability of mobile
devices improves. Version 2 of the wap specification was ratified in 2001
and is in use on most modern mobile phone handsets. |
