Wireless application protocol (WAP) is the most popular Internet-enabling technology being adopted en masse by handset manufacturers and service providers alike. This article discusses the fast-growing trend for WAP tools to access the Internet versus the current predominant use of personal computers. The article also describes the importance of WAP in the fields of E-commerce and M-commerce.

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THE INTERNATIONAL DATA CORPORAtion promises 1 billion cellular telephones worldwide by 2004, with half of them Internet-enabled. The most popular Internet-enabling technology being adopted en masse by handset manufacturers and service providers is wireless application protocol (WAP). This article attempts to describe the fast-growing trend for tools to access the Internet that will be more popular in the future than the predominant use of personal computers is at present. It also depicts the importance of WAP in the field of E-commerce, with its popularity leading E-commerce into mobile commerce (M-commerce). Because it works in already existing networks, WAP needs little modification in Web content and can be available with ease. Already, there are numerous companies providing E-commerce services through WAP around the world, and with the huge mobile telephone subscriber base, the potential for M-commerce is tremendous.

Trade developed through many stages, from barter in the old days to E-commerce today. What will be the tool for transactions tomorrow? In the past half decade, the Internet has revolutionized the practice and procedure of trade, giving birth to the new world of E-commerce. Now people can buy or sell goods and services practically 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, if they have access to the Web. Vendors have been able to tap into markets that were impossible to reach due to remote geographic location or other reasons. It is this "anywhere, anytime" technology that has fueled the new economy.

Although much has been accomplished toward this goal of being able to trade anywhere, anytime, personal computer laptops are too bulky for M-commerce. The obvious choice is empowering the mobile telephone to be the choice tool for M-commerce. The M-commerce phenomenon is centered in Asia and Europe (not the United States), where mobile telephony is further advanced and PC usage is much lower. Nokia, Ericsson, Motorola, and NTT DoCoMo, to name a few -- as well as giants in banking, retail, and travel -- are developing their mobile E-sites, including Amazon and Schwab; and all are settling on WAP. WAP works with all major wireless networks -- Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA); Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM), Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA), and Cellular Digital Packet Data (CDPD) -- via circuit switched, packet, or short messaging service and can be built into any operating system, including Windows CE, Palm OS, Epoc, or JavaOS. The Japanese mobile operator DoCoMo is the leader, with the first mover advantage in bringing mobile Internet services to market by attracting 10 million subscribers to its iMode service in less than one year. The Palm VII personal digital assistant (PDA) from 3COM can deliver wireless e-mail and information access service in the U.S. and the U.K. Most current mobile Internet services are based on the WAP standard. Microsoft, who came a bit late to the game, gave its grudging approval recently by redoing its cellular telephone browser for WAP.(n1,n2)

Analysts say such personalized services will be the meat of M-commerce. According to Gartner's research vice president, Phillip Redman, "The personalization of content and services that help consumers make their purchasing decisions" will be pivotal. Information is key to the overall success of M-commerce, and Cellmania and BroadVision are two wireless applications based on that premise. Cellmania's mEnterprise is intended to help companies bolster customer relations in part by increasing the productivity of traveling employees, mEnterprise integrates with a company's infrastructure and powers field-service and sales-force automation applications and mobile portals. BroadVision is offering BroadVision Mobile Solution to help businesses get a better line on the content customers want pushed to hand-held devices by capturing customer data. It also can create home pages that site visitors can customize to their needs.

Everyday there is some news about WAP-enabled phones and their growing use toward the Internet. Is this growth going to sustain or even surpass people's expectation to become the most important medium for communication and commerce? Will it lead the static wired E-commerce to wireless M-commerce? Although the only Internet-enabling technology being adopted en masse by handset manufacturers and service providers is WAP, there are other options, such as J2ME (Java 2 Micro Edition); or a mobile ASP (application service provider); or a Citrix terminal solution; or an OracleMobile solution, which totally ignore cellular telephones and promise to satisfy all of your mobile Internet business needs over a pager. In addition, there are issues with WAP's Wireless Markup Language (WML) which cannot be read on an HTML browser and vice versa. Is Sun's J2ME, which allows a small application to be on the telephone so it can be used even when disconnected, a good solution; or is it, as reported by Internet service vendors (ISVs), too small and does it lack too many of the Java standard edition components needed to create useable applications? In Sun's defense, Motorola displayed applications such as expense reports, e-mail, and calendaring on an Motorola iDEN cellular telephone running J2ME.(n3)

In the business-to-business (B2B) environment, real-time mobile access to online exchanges/virtual communities/auctions can be facilitated by M-commerce. Mobile workers such as sales reps, truck drivers, and service personnel will be able to use the mobile Internet. Medical doctors will be able to use their hand-held PDAs to pull up patient information, information on available drugs and online ordering/scheduling of prescriptions, clinical tests, and other procedures. Unified messaging services will allow mobile workers to use a single device for all their communications and interactions; and ubiquitous computing will use online connections to communicate exception reports, performance problems, and errors to service personnel.(n2) Most IT executives are still on the fence, whereas a few early adopters have settled on proprietary technologies. One example is a women's accessory company, NineWest, which has a non-WAP client/server solution for its field reps and buyers deployed into older Nokia 9000 cellular telephones. Developed by the Finnish company Celesta, it creates smart forms using Short Message Service (SMS) rather than going through an ISP. This solution has reportedly been profitable for NineWest because it alerts headquarters in real time, rather than through weekly batch files, when a store carrying its line needs to be restocked.

Similarly, NeoPoint of La Jolla, California, a developer of Web telephones, has created a wireless service called myAladdin.com that, among other abilities, can monitor information such as airline flights or stock performance and alert a user when a flight is delayed or a stock price drops. InfoMove of Kirkland, Washington, integrates the Global Positioning System (GPS) and text-to-speech technologies to create a private-label information service that has been sold to DaimlerChrysler and Paccar, a heavy truck manufacturer. Tekelec makes equipment for wired and wireless telecommunications suppliers to enable them to offer value-added services to their customers. Since the FCC requires that if you switch or move, your telephone company must let you keep your old telephone market, Tekelec's local number portability (LDP) software is the best on the market and with its reseller networks such as Lucent and Tellabs, Tekelec is a strong takeover candidate.

WAP is a format for displaying Web and other data on the small screens of hand-held devices, specifically, cellular telephones. WAP is a set of specifications, developed by the WAP Forum, that lets developers using WML build networked applications designed for hand-held wireless devices. WAP is a standard, similar to the Internet language HTML, which translates the web site into a format that can be read on the mobile's screen. The data is broadcast by the telephone's network supplier. WAP v1.1 constitutes the first global transparent de facto standard to be embraced by well over 75 percent of all relevant industry segments. WAP's key elements include (1) the WAP programming model, (2) wireless markup language and WML Script, (3) a microbrowser specification, (4) wireless telephony application, and (5) the WAP stack.(n4) WAP is designed to work with most wireless protocols such as CDPD, CDMA, GSM, PDC, PHS, TDMA, FLEX, REFLEX, iDEN, TETRA, DECT, DataTAC, and Mobitex.

WAP is a communications protocol and an application environment. It can be built on any operating system including PalmOS, EPOC, Windows CE, FLEXOS, OS/9, and JavaOS. WAP provides service interoperability even between different device families. WAP uses existing Internet standards, and the WAP architecture (illustrated in Exhibit 1) was designed to enable standard off-the-shelf Internet servers to provide services to wireless devices.

In addition to wireless devices, WAP uses many Internet additions when communicating standards such as XML, UDP, and IP. WAP wireless protocols are based on Internet standards such as HTTP and Transport Layer Security (TLS), but have been optimized for the unique constraints of the wireless environment. Internet standards such as HTML, HTTP, TLS, and TCP are inefficient over mobile networks, requiring large amounts of mainly text-based data to be sent. Standard HTML Web content generally cannot be displayed in an effective way on the small size screens of pocket-sized mobile telephones and pagers, and navigation around and between screens is not easy in one-handed mode. HTTP and TCP are not optimized for the intermittent coverage, long latencies, and limited bandwidth associated with wireless networks. HTTP sends its headers and commands in an inefficient text format instead of compressed binary. Wireless services using these protocols are often slow, costly, and difficult to use. The TLS security standard requires many messages to be exchanged between client and server which, with wireless transmission latencies, results in a very slow response for the user. WAP has been optimized to solve all these problems, utilizing binary transmission for greater compression of data, and is optimized for long latency and low to medium bandwidth. WAP sessions cope with intermittent coverage and can operate over a wide variety of wireless transports using IP where it is possible and other optimized protocols where IP is impossible. The WML used for WAP content makes optimum use of small screens and allows easy navigation with one hand without a full keyboard and has built-in scalability from two-line text displays through to the full graphic screens on smart telephones and communicators.(n5) Exhibit 2 illustrates the relationship between WAP and the Web.

The WAP Forum is the industry association comprised of more than 200 members that has developed the de facto world standard for wireless information and telephony services on digital mobile telephones and other wireless terminals. The primary goal of the WAP Forum is to bring together companies from all segments of the wireless industry value chain to ensure product interoperability and growth of the wireless market. WAP Forum members represent over 95 percent of the global handset market carriers, with more than 100 million subscribers, leading infrastructure providers, software developers, and other organizations providing solutions to the wireless industry (http://www.wapforum.org/).

WAP is efficient at coping with the limited bandwidth and connection-oriented nature of today's wireless networks due to its stripped-down protocol stack? WAP works with all major wireless networks and can be built into any operating system, including Windows CE, PalmOS, Epoc, or JavaOS. WAP applications are available over second-generation Global System for Mobile (GSM) networks albeit only at 14.4 kilobits per second (kbps). WAP services, however, also work on other platforms, including 2.5 G (data-enhanced second-generation) networks offering up to 128 kbps beginning in 2001. WAP low data rate services, already available in many European national markets, include short messaging service (SMS) wireless e-mail, which can interconnect with the Internet. New products and services that use the WAP format provide instant access to personal financial data, flight schedules, news and weather reports, and countless shopping opportunities. Finally, WAP gateway's flexibility enables operators to introduce and bill for new services easily without having to make changes to their existing billing systems.

Although WAP has drawn a tremendous amount of attention in the business and technology sector, its huge popularity has also drawn criticism that leads one to think that WAP will not develop into a major force impacting business and life. According to David Rensin, CTO at Aether Systems, a handheld infrastructure developer in Owings Mills, Maryland, "WAP is dead." Chief among his complaints was the necessity for rewriting the Web sites in WML for every device a WAP-enabled Web site is sent to. WML is used as a technique to get content from an HTML Web site using WAP onto small-screen devices. "You have to rewrite the same Web site for a four-line cell phone display and again for an eight-line display," and "the problem [with WAP] is content. Redoing a Web page for multiple sites on different devices is a nightmare," according to Rensin.(n1)

Hand-held devices are more limited than desktop computers in several important ways. Their screens are small, able to display only a few lines of text, and they are often monochrome instead of color. Their input capabilities are limited to a few buttons or numbers, and entering data takes extra time. They have less processing power and memory to work with, their wireless network connections have less bandwidth, and they are slower than those of computers hard-wired to fast LANs.(n6) Web applications are traditionally designed based on the assumption that visitors will have a desktop computer with a large screen and a mouse. A smart telephone can't display a large color graphic and doesn't have point-and-click navigation capabilities. As some analysts say, these limitations will hinder WAP as the choice for tomorrow's technology.

All mobile telephones and wireless LAN devices emit microwave radiation at the same frequencies used to cook food. Now scientists are trying to determine whether end-users are at risk. "We have evidence of possible genetic damage," says Dr. George Carlo, chairman of Wireless Technology Research LLC (Washington, D.C.), which has been conducting research into cellular telephones for 6 years. His study found that "using mobile phones triples the risk of brain cancer."(n7) Dr. Kjell Hansson Mild in Sweden studied radiation risk in 11,000 mobile telephone users. Symptoms such as fatigue, headaches, and burning sensations on the skin were more common among those who made longer mobile telephone calls. At the same time, there are a growing number of unconfirmed reports of individuals whose health has been affected after chronic, frequent use of mobile telephones, presumably from radiation effects on cells. There is no evidence so far of mobile phone radiation causing tumor formation or memory impairment in humans. Much more research is needed before any firm conclusions can be drawn. Whatever the effects of using mobile telephones may be in humans, the health risk to an individual user from electromagnetic radiation is likely to be very small indeed, but some individuals may be more prone to radiation side effects than others (http://www.globalchange.com/radiation.htm).

Furnishing full protection in a wireless world involves three types of code: (1) encryption algorithms to scramble data, (2) digital certificates to restrict access, and (3) antivirus software. Encryption, the most demanding of the three, follows a fairly simple equation: the larger the algorithm, the stronger the security, and the more CPU cycles needed. WAP-enabled telephones do not have the horsepower to handle the bulky security software designed for PCs. At this point, all hand-held devices, including PDAs, are vulnerable to any virus that comes along. It's worth noting that there are currently no known viruses that attack wireless gear, but as mobile IP gains popularity, it will become an increasingly attractive target. "It's conceivable one could have a worm virus similar to Explore.zip that could spread to every person's device in a matter of a few seconds," says Nachenberg.(n7)

The average mobile telephone is essentially a dumb device: good for allowing people to chat, but hopeless when it comes to managing the information that makes people's lives go round. For the past few years, the wireless industry has been engaged in a gargantuan effort to change this. The idea is to create a single smart gadget that will allow people to check their e-mail, consult the Internet, plan their schedule, and, of course, make telephone calls: in other words, a combination of an electronic organizer, a personal computer, and a mobile telephone.

Towards M-commerce applications, Sonera of Finland, which has implemented an Apion WAP gateway, is the world's first telecom operator to launch WAP services (2Q/99). In addition to providing its own services, the telco/cellco is actively and rapidly creating partnerships with companies such as Finnair, CNN Interactive, Yellow Pages, Tieto Corporation, and Pohjola.(n4)

Recently (as of April 2000), a company in California called Every path started to deliver a new era of freedom in mobility and convenience in which one will be able to shop, purchase gift certificates, bid on auctions, trade stocks, play games, pay bills, bid on fine wines, get driving directions, check the calendar, reserve a hotel room, track home prices, plan a vacation, stay in touch, or order tickets from the palm of the hand or with the sound of the voice, no matter where one is.

In Japan, NTT DoCoMo has sold more than 1 million of its Internet-based i-mode telephones in the six months since they were launched and received remarkably few complaints. The rest of the world's producers are getting ready for a surge in demand as they release their products over the next few months.

Internet content-providers are already tailoring their products for telephone users: getting rid of power-hungry pictures, for example, and distilling long-winded news stories into the bald facts. Nokia has an alliance with America's CNN to provide news that has been specifically designed for telephones. NTT DoCoMo reports that there are already more than 1000 companies providing Web pages for its telephones.(n8)

The critical success factors for M-commerce are speed, billing, and security. Each of these factors will be discussed.

Today, most digital cellular users are limited to circuit-switched data at about 9.6 kbps, sufficient for text based messaging and limited file transfer. This is where desktop Internet users were in 1994, when there were just 4 million host computers on-net compared with more than 60 million Internet hosts worldwide in October 1999. The next move in the circuit-switched world is high-speed circuit switched data (HSCSD) running at 57.6 kbps. This is sufficient for fully functional Web browsing. However, as underlined by analysts such as Gartner Group's Dataquest, HSCSD is an early adopter scenario that gives operators a competitive edge with corporations. Essentially, it is profiled for bulky data transfers.

General Packet Radio Service (GPRS), conversely, is quick and agile. As a packet-switched bearer, it promises "always-on" service at up to 115 kbps (for practical purposes). At the same time, it sits comfortably on the migration path to Enhanced Data for GSM evolution (EDGE), running at up to 384 kbps. So although speed may be a concern for WAP surfers now, technology will enhance that in the very near future.(n4)

The WAP gateway has been profiled to gather extensive billing detail for each transaction, for example, the download of content (both volume and time), universal resource locators (URLs) visited, and other typical events during a WAP session. This information is stored in a generic, flexible format in a billing log. This, in turn, interfaces to a mediation platform which translates it into valid call detail records (CDRs) and passes them to the billing agency or credit card company's billing system. The billing could be (1) transaction-based billing where the services are paid according to service usage with different prices possible for different services, (2) subscription based with a monthly fee, (3) flat rate with one price for all, (4) free where the content provider may pay for the airtime to the operator, or (5) a combination of the above four billing options. The billing log receives "billable events" from the event manager. The gateway's billing data interface requires only minor tuning to adjust its data formatting for different billing systems. In short, the WAP gateway's flexibility enables operators to introduce and bill for new services easily without having to make changes to their existing billing systems. However, service roaming is difficult if transaction-based billing is used. The Holy Grail is turning the hand-held device into a payment device or the equivalent of an electronic wallet. As we move toward the third-generation (3G) mobile standard, also known as Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS), an International Telecommunication Union (ITU) standard for voice, video, and Internet services licensed in Europe in 2000 and to be deployed in 2002, airtime will be packet-based with an emphasis on content; and billing possibilities are (1) monthly fee (similar to the Internet model), (2) amount of data or time-based, (3) commercials, (4) service transactions, (5) or a combination of the above options. Billing is a very market-sensitive problem and one solution is not possible. Without a doubt, the biggest change will be more choices and in the end, markets will decide between free versus price for M-commerce.

Security is optional in the WAP standard, but is dearly mandatory for E-commerce providers and users. It may be implemented initially at the wireless transport layer security (WTLS) level of the WAP stack. This is the wireless version of industry standard transport layer security (TLS), equivalent to the widely deployed secure sockets layer (SSL) 3.1. As a recent Baltimore Technologies white paper notes, it provides a secure network connection session between a client and a server and it most commonly appears between a Web browser (in WAP's case, the handset microbrowser) and a Web server, which can be an existing Internet server that is also WAP-enabled.

Full participation in E-commerce requires that the additional security elements of verified authentication, authorization, and nonrepudiation be addressed. In real terms, this implies integration with public key infrastructure (PKI) systems that are already deployed and with new systems in the future. In the wireless arena, these systems will be defined in WAP.(n4) Recently citing the growth in usage of wireless devices, Richard Yanowitch, VeriSign Vice President of Worldwide Marketing, said that his company plans to provide "a complete trust infrastructure to the wireless world." Key to the plan is an arrangement whereby Motorola will include the Verisign technology in the browsers that run on Motorola mobile telephones. Other companies endorsing Verisign's plan include RSA Security, BellSouth, Sonera SmartTrust, and Research In Motion. These companies will leverage the technologies in their own products and services. For instance, technologies and services available from VeriSign include:

Transaction services to be offered include Wireless Validation Services, for real-time certificate validation, and Wireless Payment Services, to enable wireless payment applications?

A new study by International Data Corporation predicts that the number of wireless Internet subscribers will jump from 5 million in 2000 to nearly 300 million in just 3 years. That would account for more than half of all Internet users worldwide. WAP's impact on mobile data would be similar to what Netscape's impact was for the Internet: to provide an attractive and notionally transparent portal to the cyber world, which had more than 200 million users in September 1999, in addition to thousands of corporate intranets. For E-commerce providers, that portal provides a potential user base of more than 400 million mobile subscribers worldwide because the Internet is ultimately about E-commerce. Even though it includes a vast range of so-called "free" services -- e-mail, social networks, consumer networks, a range of educational tools, computer games, and more -- it is all about global economic activity and productivity. For the vast majority of fixed network Internet users, E-commerce is still essentially only 1 to 3 years old. Amazon.com was not a household word in 1996. Internet banking, brokering, and financial services were not yet deployed into the mass market.

Yet this E-commerce world of B2B, retail banking, brokering, insurance, financial services, and purchase of almost any good or service is commonplace. There is no reason why the Internet space should not be embraced by mobile users in the same manner, subject to some differences in their marketing profile.(n4) Salespeople, for example, are provided through a wireless database access the information needed to close a deal on the spot. Prices and delivery dates can be checked, orders can be entered, and even payments can be made without stepping outside the customer's office. That boosts the hit ratio, eliminates paperwork (and low-level administrative positions), improves customer service, and speeds cash flow.

Similar to the Internet revolution, this mobile makeover will change forever the way companies do business. Out of the office will no longer mean out of touch. In fact, remote employees may make wireless a way of life, so they do not have to dial in for e-mail and other information. Companies will be able to reinvent business processes, extending them directly to the persons in the field who deal directly with customers. Ultimately, companies and carriers could deploy wireless LANs to hotels and other public places, creating hot spots of high-speed connectivity for M-commerce. In the future, the ideal mobile device will be a single product suited for standard network access and services to handle tasks that extend the use of the device beyond its hardware-based limitations.

A U.K.-based consultancy's analyst predicts that 70 percent of current cellular users in developed countries may be using advanced data services by 2005, with the value of the cellular data market overall set to reach $80 billion, from a very low base in 1999. The takeoff of cellular data is attracting a host of new players to the mobile communications market, including Internet-based companies such as Netscape, Amazon, Excite, Microsoft, IBM, and Cisco. Media companies such as CNN, Reuters, and ITN are examples of earlybird providers.(n4)

As for the United States, it has been already predicted that the number of people using cellular telephones for wireless data will skyrocket from 3 percent of the U.S. online population to 78 percent over the 12 months from January through December 2001. The main reason for the increase is that employers are starting to pay for these services, according to a survey released by New York-based Cap Gemini America and Corechange, Inc., a wireless portal provider based in Boston. Currently, 33 percent of the U.S. online population uses cellular phones for business purposes. Of that 33 percent, 11 percent (or 3 percent of the total online population) uses them for data applications such as e-mail and news, the companies say. By the end of 2001, 78 percent of the U.S. online population will be using cellular telephones for data. According to this survey of 1000 U.S. Internet users, which was conducted by Greenfield Online, Inc. on behalf of Cap Gemini, 47 percent of those who will begin using cellular telephones to access data in the year 2001 said they would do so because someone else, mainly their employer, would begin paying for it. "This was the most important reason for adoption of the new technology," said David Ridemar, head of Cap Gemini America's EBusiness Unit. Of those who will start accessing data with their cell phones in 2001, 52 percent said they will use the functionality for a mix of e-mail, personal data, and business information, 24 percent will use it for e-mail and personal data, and, 13 percent will use it for e-mail only.(n10)

Jupiter Communications forecasts a jump in consumer-to-consumer auctions from $3 billion in 1999 sales to $15 billion in 2004. These numbers are significant because auctions are a natural match for wireless providers for the following reasons:

Indeed, it is suggested by some analysts that cellular subscriber numbers will top 1 billion by 2004, a substantial number of them WAP-enabled. Clearly giving mobile users the same mobile data connectivity that fixed network Internet users enjoy could more than double the potential global Internet market at a stroke.

The Gartner Group's Nigel Deighton maintains that, given current penetrations of mobile and Internet markets, the stage is set for a global boom in M-commerce that could largely ignore the PC in favor of mobile devices. He predicts further that some 30 to 50 percent of B2B E-commerce will be carried out via a mobile device by 2004.(n4) Motorola, for example, estimates that by 2005 the number of wireless devices with Internet access will exceed the number of wired ones. These smart new telephones will not only give another boost to the sale of mobiles, but they will change the nature of the Internet economy, making personal computers far less important, yet at the same time tempting many more people onto the information superhighway.(n8)

The author strongly believes that trade cannot be tied to wires. As so much research indicates, a major part of the workforce is heading toward location independence. The PC-based Internet has already redefined the nature of doing business, giving birth to popular E-commerce. However, to be truly location independent and to be "anywhere, anytime," the PC is not the choice for B2B and B2C M-commerce. Necessity is the mother of all invention. M-commerce is already becoming a necessity in this age of the digital economy. In conclusion, the world is betting on M-commerce, in a manner reminiscent of the 1999 United States bet on Internet commerce. We can safely predict many losers, and a few winners, from the worldwide run to mobile Internet services.

DIAGRAM: EXHIBIT 1 WAP Architecture

DIAGRAM: EXHIBIT 2 WAP and the Web