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Wireless
Application Protocol (WAP)
Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) is an open
international standard for applications that use
wireless communication, for example Internet
access from a mobile phone. WAP was designed to
provide services equivalent to a Web browser
with some mobile-specific additions, being
specifically designed to address the limitations
of very small portable devices. However, during
its first years of existence WAP suffered from
considerable negative media attention and has
been criticised heavily for its design choices
and limitations.
Why Need WAP
WAP is a protocol created for mobile
devices such as PDAs and mobile phones to allow
them access to the internet. Before the protocol
was created business people found it difficult
to leave the office in case they missed an
important e-mail or lost money on their stocks.
Not just business people were affected by this
restraint. People started staying in so they
could get sports results and the latest news
headlines from their TV. But with the creation
of WAP (a series of smaller protocols combined
together) all this was thrown into the past. WAP
allows users to send and receive emails, get the
latest FTSE market prices, receive all the sport
results, and keep up with the latest news
headlines.
Technical
specifications
The primary language of the WAP specification is
WML, the Wireless Markup Language, which has
been designed from scratch for handheld devices
with phone-specific features following the XML
guidelines.
The official body developing WAP used to be the
WAP Forum. The WAP Forum has consolidated (along
with many other forums of the industry) into OMA
(Open Mobile Alliance), which covers virtually
everything in future development of wireless
data services.
WAP 2.0
The new version of WAP, WAP 2.0, is a
re-engineering of WAP using XML. Some observers
predict that this next-generation WAP will
converge with, and be replaced by, true Web
access to pocket devices. Whether this next
generation (Wireless Internet Protocol to
mobile) will still be referred to as WAP is yet
to be decided. XHTML Basic, a subset of XHTML,
is made to work in mobile devices.
WAP Push
WAP Push, available since WAP 1.2,
has been incorporated into the specification to
allow WAP content to be pushed to the mobile
handset with minimum user intervention. A WAP
Push is basically a specially encoded message
which includes a link to a WAP address. A WAP
Push can be delivered over WAP or SMS bearer. On
receiving a WAP Push, a WAP 1.2 or later enabled
handset will automatically give the user the
option to access the WAP content.
In this way, the WAP Push directs the end user
to a WAP address where particular content may be
stored ready for viewing or downloading to the
handset. The address could be a simple page or
multimedia content (e.g. polyphonic ring tone)
or a Java application. Using WAP Push, one can
make it easier for end users to discover and
access new mobile services.
Commercial
status
Failure?
WAP was intended as a mobile
replacement for the World Wide Web. However, its
idiosyncratic protocols cut users off from the
true HTML / HTTP Web, leaving only native WAP
content and Web-to-WAP proxy content available
to WAP users. WAP's charging model, where users
have to pay by the minute regardless of the
amount of data received, has also been
criticized.
WAP was hyped at the time of its introduction,
leading users to expect WAP to have the
performance of the Web. One telco's advertising
showed a cartoon WAP user "surfing" through a
Neuromancer-like "information space". In terms
of speed, ease of use, appearance and
interoperability, the reality fell far short of
expectations. This led to the unkind, but widely
used phrases: "WAP is crap", "Worthless
Application Protocol", "Wait And Pay".
The main reasons for the failure of WAP were
price and closedness. Even though GPRS made WAP
cheap, and cell phone operators opened their
gateways to access all of the Internet, WAP did
not quite take off.
Success?
However, WAP has seen huge success in
Japan. While the largest operator NTT DoCoMo has
famously disdained WAP in favor of its in-house
system i-mode, rival operators KDDI (au) and
Vodafone Japan have both been successful with
the WAP technology. In particular, J-Phone's Sha-Mail
picture mail and Java (JSCL) services, as well
as au's chakuuta/chakumovie (ringtone song/ringtone
movie) services are based on WAP. After being
shadowed by the initial success of i-mode, the
two smaller Japanese operators have been gaining
market share from DoCoMo since spring 2001.
Korea is also leading the world in providing
advanced WAP services. WAP on top of the
cdma2000 network has been proven to be the state
of the art wireless data infrastructure.
According to the Mobile Data Association, June
2004 has seen a considerable increase of 42% in
its recorded number of WAP pages viewed compared
with the same period in 2003. This takes the
total for the second quarter of 2004 to 4
billion.
From 2003/2004, WAP has made a stronger
resurgence with the introduction of Wireless
services (such as Vodafone Live!, T-Mobile
T-Zones and other easily-accessible services).
Operator revenues are generated by transfer of
GPRS and UMTS data which is a different model to
the Web, and usage is up. People are starting to
use WAP and the early failures have been masked,
as the real point of the system – access to
wireless services and applications – has come to
the forefront.
Spin off technologies, such as MMS (picture
messaging), a combination of WAP and SMS, have
further driven the protocol. Along with an
appreciation of device diversity and the changes
to underlying pages, to be more device-specific
rather than being aimed at lowest common
denomintator, has allowed for the content
presented to be more compelling and usable.
Finally it looks like WAP is having its day.
Protocol
design lessons from WAP
There has been considerable
discussion about whether the WAP protocol design
was appropriate. The initial design of WAP was
specifically aimed at protocol independence
across a range of different protocols (SMS, IP
over PPP over a circuit switched bearer, IP over
GPRS etc). This has led to a protocol
considerably more complex than an approach
directly over IP might have caused.
Most controversial, especially for many from the
IP side was the design of WAP over IP. WAP's
transmission layer protocol, WTP, uses its own
retransmission mechanisms over UDP/IP to attempt
to solve the problem of TCP's inadequacy for
high packet loss networks.
External Links
WAP URL's
WAP URLs currently active for use in WAP
research and information access.
You can see and example of a WAP site by typing
wap.yahoo.com in your WAP phone or WAP
browser. You can download a WAP browser for
example from
Apache software or type it into wapalizer
at
Gelon.
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