Keywords: Wireless Application Protocol, cellphones, internet

Published in: Novedades-ICTnet! v2.0, a weekly newsletter of ICTnet.es, the virtual community for professionals. Originally written in Spanish.

Date: May 2001

WRITING

WAP (Wireless Application Protocol)

WAP is the acronym for Wireless Application Protocol, a standard that allows the connexion to the Internet to all kind of wireless devices, such as mobile telephones, PDAs or radiotransmitters, and provides them with the access to services such as e-mail, the World Wide Web, newsgroups or Internet Relay Chat.

The WAP protocol was developed in 1998 by four companies: Ericsson, Motorola, Nokia and Unwired Planet (today Phone.com) and, even though it is not a formal standard yet, it is currently supported by the great majority of manufacturers in the telecommunications and computing industry worldwide, as well as the most important wireless telephony operators. The aim of this new technology was to merge the functionalities of a computer and those of the mobile phone in one single device, and thus offer advanced data services through wireless terminals, and it was also meant to serve as a technological platform for the development of new applications.

To access these services and contents, WAP terminals incorporate a microbrowser that works quite similarly to conventional Internet browsers, but adapted to the bandwidth limitation of wireless networks, to the memory of these mobile devices, and to their small screen, which forces unidimensional navigation through ascendent or descendent menus. If the language used for building web pages is HTML, to display text information in mobile phones or PDAs we use WML (Wireless Markup Language).

There is certain software which converts HTML pages into WML, programs that help us to create our WML sites and we can also find WAP simulators in the Internet.

WAP Navigation

When we request any information from our wireless terminal, the WAP proxy traduces the request to the HTTP protocol and routes it through the Internet so that the WAP client can establish contact with a web server. For answering, the WAP proxy carries out the reverse process, i.e., it converts the web page received by HTTP protocol from HTML format to WML and it routes it to the wireless terminal through the wireless net using the WAP protocol.

The WTA server (Wireless Telephony Application) gives WAP access to the facilities offered by the telecommunications infraestructure of the Internet Service Provider, and it allows us to control the services of the net thanks to telephony functionalities that can be accessed via WML from a mobile terminal.

WAP Services

Nowadays WAP services are basically the access to contents, information on demand, e-mail and fax, digital assistants, management of a voice maibox, access to databases, bank operations and stock market or weather forecast, amongst others.

In order to provide these secure services, the WAP protocol is composed by a series of layers that guarantee the integrity and privacy of data, as well as the autentication of communications, and some companies are already developing secure payment solutions through WAP terminals.

Useful links

Open Mobile Alliance. WAP Forum
http://www.wapforum.com/
International Engineering Consortium. WAP
http://www.iec.org/tutorials/wap