Contrary to what the mobile industry has been experiencing since the launch of the Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) early last year, the GSM Association (Dublin) painted a brighter future for the protocol at the 3GSM Congress in Cannes, France last week. One hundred million WAP-enabled terminals will be in the market by the end of 2001, according to Robert Conway, chief executive of the association, pointing towards industry forecasts for Europe. "With the introduction of 'always-on' GPRS [general packet radio service] networks by as many as 30 GSM [global system for mobile communication] networks currently set up worldwide, WAP's future has never been brighter," he said.
The twin successes of the Short Message Service (SMS) service on GSM and the I-mode services in Japan (where one out of every seven Japanese uses the data service) is making it clearer that a market for mobile data services exists. Slow data speeds and lack of standardization for seamless global roaming has marred the success of WAP, however.
Andreas Gerdes, CEO and chairman of iWORLD Group, a consulting group to businesses that are interested in investing into mobile communications, made clear his frustration at the Congress saying that vendor-hype has been so detrimental to new mobile businesses that based their products and services on the protocol, that they have seen investor interest dry up. Subdued interest in the Orange Personal Communications Services Ltd. (Bristol, U.K.) stock offering is an example of the cooler attitude, he said.
"Don't just give us the prototypes and theories about the 3G [third-generation] world. Show us real products and ready-to-go services modules along with all the works like cross-platform standardization," said Gerdes. He added that WAP's failure to make good has also been due to the lack of easy-access handsets available globally. The GSM Association's Conway begged to differ, saying that WAP terminals were never meant to cram desktop PCs into mobile phones. Customers should be lured by playing on the three human elements of immediacy, intimacy and mobility of the global wireless environment, he said.
The recent approval of 19 GPRS Roaming Exchange (GRX) operators by the association, has further made the case for mobile internet stronger. France Telecom, Deutsche Telekom, Cable & Wireless PLC (C&W, London) and KPN Telecom BV (Amsterdam) are among some of the major operators that will launch their GRX this year. France Telecom's executive vice president for marketing and sales at its long-distance division, Francis Kretz, believes that launching its GRX in May 2001 is going to make WAP an even more interesting proposition for its mobile operator clients worldwide as well as its user community.