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Welcome to the W.A.P. 

Emerging Technology web site!

(presented by The Bowtie Forum*)

 

What is W.A.P ?

W.A.P. or Wireless Application Protocol is the de-facto world standard for the transmission and delivery of data, information services, and other applications to wireless telephony devices.  Both handset manufacturers and infrastructure providers, which represent 90% of the world market across all technologies, have committed to shipping WAP enabled devices.  This technology will allow wireless subscribers to access a variety of information services from wireless terminals (handheld and others)

 

The W.A.P. Forum (http://www.wapforum.org)  

Several handset and infrastructure manufacturers founded the WAP Forum in June of 1997.  These industry players included Ericsson, Motorola, Nokia, and Phone.Com.  Since that time over 400 members have joined the WAP forum including wireless operators representing over 100 million wireless subscribers.  Their goal is to provide millions of WAP enabled devices to the public by the end of 2000.  The WAP forum has published a Global Wireless Protocol Specification that is based on existing Internet standards such as XML and IP.  Although current WAP specifications solve issues regarding the delivery of wireless applications in today's environment of constrained wireless spectrum, the WAP forum is continuously working to implement new standards that would include ARIB, CDG, ECMA, ETSI, TIA, and W3C.  The goal is to provide an open standard that will provide wireless subscribers and industry participants with multiple solutions for the delivery of wireless information applications.  Currently, the WAP forum is working towards the convergence of XHTML and HTTP standards.

The WAP Forum has the following goals:

To bring Internet Content and advanced data services to wireless phones and other wireless terminals

To create a global wireless protocol specifications that work across all wireless network technologies.

To enable the creation of content and applications that scale across a wide range of wireless bearer networks and device types.

To embrace and extend existing standards and technology wherever possible and appropriate.  

 

 * Benn's Emerging Technology Project faithfully submitted this day, October 27, 2000, by 

   EMBA'01 Team # 1 (Tim Berry, Patricia Coe, Liliana Lehmann, Blair Schlossberg, Brian Sipe).

   

Last Updated: 10/27/2000