Wireless

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We are currently witnessing a veritable surge in technology: initially advocated as the Web for mobile phones at the beginning of 2000, Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) is now being discredited as impractical, useless, expensive and "proprietary." From Expansion (a French economic magazine) to Anchordesk, from the IETF to CNET.com, does everyone really agree that WAP should be abolished, that it has no future? At Netmedia 2000 in London, most of those who attended the conference described WAP as an "aberration." What does this mean? Has the hype cycle now fallen in step with "Internet time" and its ultra-short time scales?

In December 1999, everybody was advocating WAP, presenting it in no uncertain terms as the Web for GSM mobiles. At the time, we at SQLI were the only people to voice a warning. In February 2000 at Cebit, all players were singing the praises of WAP as the way to a "mobile Internet." It was in May 2000 that the first articles began to appear describing the difficulties of implementing WAP and the highly restricted usability of its terminals and services. Now, in July 2000, this backlash is almost unanimous. We note in passing that the harshest critics (MSNBC, the Wall Street Journal...) tend to be from the USA, where the development of mobile phone communication is behind that of Europe. The Americans are attempting to slow down a sector in which they have not been ahead of the game and to torpedo a standard over which they have little control; this is a smart stratagem, but we are not forced to follow suit.

Still, it is easy to explain why we are witnessing such rejection: WAP offers a very restricted user interface, there are still few services, access is expensive, navigation is often restricted (the much talked-about practice of "waplocking"), the standard is of "proprietary" origins, and conforming to it requires custom development. Here is what the Wall Street Journal had to say in June, 2000 about the WAP experience,"...too often, the experience is one of overloaded servers, a few unimaginative services and a few lines of text scrolling slowly up a screen half the size of a credit card." Ouch! Are we to understand that the original euphoria has given way to disappointment?

This backlash is to be expected in that WAP does not mean simple, easy, cheap Internet access for all. How do you imagine "surfing the Web" with an interface limited to 4 lines of text? The truth is to be found in browsing statistics: currently, European users connect to WAP services less than once a week (source: Deutsche Telekom). And there are good reasons for this somewhat limited success. Articles comparing people's experiences highlight the weaknesses of mobile Internet access caused by the user interface (this was to be expected) but also by broken promises (now that's bad) such as the much-hyped global positioning feature (cell phone technology allowing your location to be determined at any moment). You query a WAP service to choose a restaurant near to your current geographic location (the promise) and you are offered places which are on the other side of the county (the reality). If the "m-commerce" (m for mobile) which is being advertised revolves around this function, you can forget it for a good few years yet! Moreover, it turns out that setting up WAP access is still too complicated for the general public. The attitude of mobile phone operators is simply inadequate: locking ("waplocking") a portal is suicidal, whereas the freedom to go from one site to another is precisely what has contributed to the Web's success.

In short, WAP's first assessment shows serious flaws. Are these failings not likely to prove even more serious when the consequences of these technical limitations are considered? The less naive among us were already aware that it would not be possible to use Web site content as-is, and that an (enormous) amount of effort would be necessary in adapting sites to make them available via a WAP service due to the terribly limited user interface (a screen that is far too small, an unsuitable keyboard). This effort turned out to be a serious obstacle to rapid WAP service implementation. The interface even seems to vary from one device to another! For service designers, this means effort must be put into specific optimization for the most popular models (there aren't that many of them, but already the standard's inconsistencies are showing through). Starting to sound too much like hard work?

Faced with all these disadvantages, some people are starting to advocate abandoning the WAP standard in favor of its Japanese competitor I-mode, or even proposing gateway-type solutions in order to make it easier to lift HTML from existing Web sites. But replacing WAP with a different standard will not do anything to eliminate the main problem, namely that the user interface will remain the way it is: too limited for "general Internet" use. Replacing WAP with another set of standards will not do anything to improve this situation. Some observers are claiming that the growth of the mobile Internet is linked to the availability of broadband cellular networks. True as this is, it should be borne in mind that there are serious obstacles to overcome, from both a technological and an economic point of view, before Internet access offering both high bandwidth and mobility will be available. In Europe, heavy investments will need to be made for the current GSM network to conform to the UMTS standard (high data rates for mobiles), which no telephone operator either can make or would want to make (they are already anxious that the time over which they can expect to recoup their investment is increasing with the growth of competition). We will therefore have to make do with GPRS (medium bandwidth) for at least 5 years. That is where the technical problems begin: GPRS requires the cellular network to be made more dense (which will limit coverage to urban areas in the short term). And that is not all: increasing bandwidth is not without its own pitfalls, and will inevitably detract from mobility. This means that it will not be possible to stay permanently connected while driving along the highway, for example. Is this physical handicap to lead to other methods which have yet to be discovered and put on the market? Once again, if mobile Internet means high data rates, come back and see us when they're ready!

But the crux of the problem rests not with network bandwidth, or with the limits of the user interface, but stems rather from the fact that WAP was badly positioned in the first place. WAP is not, and never will be, "everything for everybody". It is actually an (needed) addition running in tandem with the Internet as a whole. Is the best role for WAP thus to bring personalization to those on the move? Indeed, adequate use of wireless terminals will allow the impact of personalization-oriented Web sites to be extended to work in the field, where business is carried out, where processes are moved forward. To a large extent, wireless terminals are the key weapon in personalization, allowing a user to remain in communication any time any place with their network of contacts: clients, employees and partners. The perfect combination of an Internet-based customer relations management application implies: (a) a Web site allowing one's needs to be defined via an interface which makes economical use of one's time and energy, and (b) simple communication applications based on "wireless" standards (such as WAP), in order to bring the user the results they expect.

The LinkUall WAP example

The LinkUall.com service provides a good example of such a combination of personalization functions extended to use in the field via a WAP interface. LinkUall is a site allowing teams and projects to be coordinated via the Web: monitoring processes, publishing documents, organizing meetings, and so on. Through its Web site, this service offers a highly sophisticated interface, allowing one's needs and expectations to be customized in detail. On the other hand, it is clear that we will not stay permanently glued to our screens in order to follow a project's development. Naturally, we will preferably want the service to alert us directly when such-and-such an event occurs or when such-and-such a threshold is reached. This notification function was previously delivered by e-mail and people generally had to make the best of it. Today, notification via e-mail, while still necessary, has become insufficient. Today, what people want . what people need . is to be permanently connected with their business: that means "any time, any place."

Let us continue our example with LinkUall. Notification of events such as a change of date for a meeting is now possible via a WAP application: you receive notification directly to your phone (in SMS format, thus compatible with the majority of cell phones currently in use) and if your terminal allows (in other words, if it is WAP compatible), you will even be able to reply and send your decision on this event (in the case of a change of meeting, "Yes, I'll be there").

It can be seen from this example that mobile Internet works in tandem with personalization, since it extends well-designed Web sites. A suitable user interface is inevitably what allows people to benefit most from this ability to react on the move. Now clearly, this type of use is far from the marketing promises that were repeated to us over and over again, but it is concrete and useful everywhere.

The fact that the mobile Internet runs alongside the Internet as a whole rather than being a stand-alone entity is not in doubt. However, putting the WAP standard forward as the best candidate for this role is perhaps an idea which should be treated with more caution.

My own caution is not fueled by current criticism, which is just as rife as the hype which preceded it. No, I think the most threatening attack could come instead from the IETF (the body in charge of moderating standards for the Internet in its wider sense, the W3C being limited to those of the Web). Last May, a highly critical document was distributed via the IETF mailing list asking for comments from all subscribers on the theme of the "WAP Trap" ("WAP is a Trap"). This document explained that WAP is not an open standard, that it is based on flawed design principles and, consequently, is a technical failure to be avoided. The authors launched what was a fair attack... before going on to propose their own standard. This way of going about things might be questioned, but their arguments are well founded (Read this document). Moreover, it is true that the WAP Forum (the body controlling development of the WAP standard) is simply a grouping of industry players such as Nokia and Ericsson. This type of assembly is not the best guarantee of a long-lasting standard (who remembers the fate of OSF, intended to produce a standard UNIX?). Not only is WAP defined by manufacturers, but in addition, it is also promoted and deployed by telcos. The latter is hardly a feature to boast about, given the whole array of Internet-related telcos.

We are experiencing at first hand, then, the differences which can exist between a declared standard, such as WAP, and the emerging standards that the Internet produces each year. Will WAP survive beyond the current year? There's no guarantee it will. What I can perhaps assure you, on the other hand, is that its successor will succeed if it is able to limit its ambition to being an "all-terrain" addition to the Web, rather than a competitor? TOP

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Alain Lefebvre is co-founder and vice president of Groupe SQLI , a total-Internet agency specialized in defining and activating a useful and effective Internet presence for its clients. A major new technology player for more than a decade, Groupe SQLI offers full service and continuing coaching to enable companies to move towards profitable total-Internet solutions.
Author of three books dedicated to client/server and intranet, Mr. Lefebvre is also a regular contributor to many specialized publications. His upcoming book takes a close look at the strategies used by today's most well-known Web sites.

TechMetrix Research is a technically focused analyst firm focused on e-business application development needs. Based in Boston, Mass., the firm publishes comparison reports and product reviews designed to aid enterprises with decision making and to keep pace with the fast-moving e-business market.

TechMetrix is a U.S.-based subsidiary of SQLI, a European company that offers on-site development services to international organizations. SQLI specializes in e-business project development.