The end of the line for Wap?

Dutch carrier KPN is evaluating whether to support rival wireless application protocol (Wap) and iMode-based technologies in its planned third-generation network covering the UK, Germany, France and Belgium, following its alliance with NTT DoCoMo and Hutchinson Whampoa last month.

Amos Kater, KPN's innovation manager for mobile data, confirmed that the company intended to deploy Japan's iMode wireless web technology in Europe, either alongside its current Wap services or as a separate application, although he said it was still too early to provide details.

"iMode has proven itself as a technology and we are looking for a way to bring iMode applications to Europe," he said. "At the moment, there are only a few GSM [Global System for Mobile communications] cHTML phones available, but we do not expect that to become a problem."

Compact HTML (cHTML), which is currently only used in Japan, is an internet mark-up language similar to the widely used HTML language. It enables content providers to develop applications quickly without having to rely on Wap converters, and proponents warn that it could spell the end of the road for Wap-based services, which require website operators to write Wap-specific versions of their sites.

But cHTML-based content needs to pass through a cHTML gateway before users can access it on their mobile phones using an iMode browser. The underlying network technology does not matter, however.

Logica, for one, released its own m-WorldGate cHTML gateway last month, and Kater confirmed that KPN is considering whether to adopt this offering, among others.

The sudden interest in iMode springs from a certain disillusionment with Wap's ability to live up to the hype that has surrounded it since its launch. A recent survey showed that although 50 per cent of websites now support Wap to some degree, users can only access select streams of text, rather than the full range of graphics, colour and video that they associate with the internet. But unlike Wap, iMode is able to deliver colour images to mobile devices.

Wap critics also claim that it is easier to convert content to run on mobile phones using cHTML than Wap's wireless mark-up language (WML).

As a result, iMode subscriber numbers have grown rapidly, hitting the 10 million mark last week. Users currently have access to around 20,000 content pages.

Incomplete standards
But Simon Buckingham, managing director at Mobilelifestreams, claimed the biggest problem Wap technology faces is the new standards that are issued every six months, making it a moving target.

"That makes Wap hard to work with," he said. "It may only take about four months to develop new technology, but it takes between 12 and 18 months to make a commercial application for the marketplace."

Frost & Sullivan analyst Jan Ten Sythoff said that Wap downloads will remain slow and expensive until GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) provides faster, 'always-on' data transmission. "Wap takes 20 to 30 seconds to connect," he said. "That gets expensive and it's annoying when you are on the move."

But Wap defenders argue that WML is based on the eXtensible Mark-up Language (XML), which has been tagged as the future foundation of the internet. They also claim that Wap offers better security to customers than iMode because it uses the safeguards of the GSM SIM card.

Platform provider Tantau, however, attested that neither iMode nor Wap provided enough security for undertaking transactions. Peter Klante, Tantau's vice president of marketing, said that ecommerce companies could only maintain customer relationships by keeping internet gateways, regardless of which protocol they are based on, under their own control.

"Wap and iMode can be relatively secure. However, for conversion to and from secure HTTP content, the information needs to be decrypted at the wireless internet gateway," he said. "If that resides with the carrier, it leaves a security hole for transactions to banks and travel companies."