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Technology

WAP vs. iMode - The Big Cell Fight 108

Posted by Hemos from the annnddd-in-this-corner dept.
har124 writes: "With DoCoMo's decision to take its i-Mode phones, which are hugely popular in Japan, to the U.S. and Europe, the big fight between i-Mode and WAP seems to have begun. Who'll emerge from this bloody brawl? Check out the discussion."
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WAP vs iMode - The Big Cell Fight More

WAP vs iMode - The Big Cell Fight

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  • Saying that NTT DoCoMo's i-Mode is "hugely popular in Japan" is like saying that Microsoft Windows is "hugely popular in the US". Think different!

    Presently Japan has three phone services available: traditional land-line phones are owned and controlled by NTT, Japan's telephone monopoloy. Then there are small "mini" cellular phones, using a technology similar to Metrocom's Ricochet modem, which are very cheap but unsophisticated and incapable of receiving calls indoors without a repeater (the pole antennas are too weak). There are lots of competitors there. Then there is DoCoMo, which is NOT a company, but a brand name of NTT's cell phone service. This is traditional cell phone service with big tower antennas. It's also the only such service. That's right, NTT DoCoMo pretty much has a monopoly on traditional, high-powered, sophisticated cellular service in Japan.

  • 2. Speed burns baby! WAP, at best can handle 9600.

    Not quite true. WAP can't handle anything - WAP is the mobile version of HTTP, WML is the mobile version of HTML and 9600baud are the mobile version of 56k modems.

    It is the phone and GSM network that limit the speed to 9600baud. By removing some of the error correction this can be upped to 14,400bps. By using more than one channel you can double, triple etc the speed.

    Currently Orange [orange.co.uk] are allowing 14k4 connections and are selling a datacard for PCMCIA equipped PCs which provides 28k8 conections.

    You could, if you wanted run a WAP browser on this and be running WAP at 28k8. I prefer to run a WAP browser on my home PC and get WAP at 512kbps though.

    M@t :o)

  • I hate instantaneous global-anywhere communications. Sometimes I DON'T WANT to be reachable. Most exployers expect otherwise now to the point where being out of touch outside company hours has become a firing offense. And not just during daily off-hours. EVEN ON VACATION. VACATION FER CRYING OUT LOUD!! You earned your vacation time. You earned the ABSOLUTE RIGHT not to have to work during that time. The company OWES YOU. Your vacation time is golden.

    Vacation is not "permitted only when convenient for the company". Nothing is so important that someone else at the office can't handle it and needs to bother you on your vacation. On your vacation, you are God. Always remember this.

    Now for the tips to avoid having your off time fucked up.

    (1) Never give your personal cell number to co-workers. If you did, leave the cell phone home on vacation, or change the number or take a different phone (for *your* use on vacation). This advice also applies to personal email.

    (2) Tell co workers you're unreachable because yoiu're going on a cruise to Tahiti even if you're just going to work around the yard on vacation. This reduces morons trying to **STEAL** your hard earned vacation time from you by phoning you up.

    (3) Next, get rid of your answering machine or voice mail "services". Once I realized that my answering machine only serves the caller and not me, I got rid of it. With the Caller ID box, I never answer the phone unless I recognize the number and choose, at my discression, to answer it. 999/1000 times if it says "Out of Area"/"Unavailable" it's telemarketing scum. They like to hide behing ancient PBXs that conveniently don't pass caller ID information, which is fortunetly for us, a dead giveaway. As for everyone else, getting ring... ring... ring... ring... endlessly with no opportunity to leave messages serves them right for bothering you. Works wonders with debt collectors wrongfully trying to collect from you as well. And it wastes the telemarketers maximum possible amount of time.

    (4) Don't capitulate. Don't listen to office voice mail on vacation. It'll just add stress or worse, may cause you to cave and call in or, God forbid, go down to the office to solve problems.

    (5) Don't accept "deals". "Come back a day early and take another day or two later." Contiguous days off is != to the sum of its parts. Work-DayOff-Work-DayOff-Work-DayOff-Work-DayOff-Wo rk (that's 4 days off) is not the same as 3 days off in a row.

    (6) Don't even accept extra pay for cancelling vacation early. Most of us in IT already get paid plenty well. I don't need nor want "bonus pay" for ending vacation early. I WANT THE TIME OFF. THE TIME, DO YOU HEAR ME? Give me what I was promised: My accumulated vacation days.

    Do all of these things and know that it is RIGHT for you to do them. Your hard earned vacation time takes absolute priority over all work related issues. Now quit reading this (you're dangerously close to "doing work") in your hotel room and go back to the beach!

  • How can you root for i-mode in the belief that i-mode brings packet based access?

    It is the network - not the application that provides the data transfer interface. If you want packet based access you have to wait for the network to provide it. If you want i-mode you have to wait for the network to have a suitable infrastructure and for your phone manufacturer to support it.

  • Wap's already been verbed (I'll wap you my address!) and therefore has a huge advantage over Imode. And Imode doesn't scan well as a verb (I'll Imode you my address?) See? It just doesn't work as well.

    Of course, wap sounds kind of violent, which could be a down side when the fed hits the MPAA with a big lawsuit like they did with big Tobacco (They've got cartoon animals peddling violence to our CHILDREN!) Or something.

  • The wap devices that are currently available use the phone.com browser, unfortunately the feature set is poor and the phone OEMs like Nokia and Motorola just integrate it and think they have done all that is required.
    Unfortunately rendering WML pages isn't enough, being able to interface with the pages is whats important to the user, remember the user do you?
    All of the other trivialities like documentation and feature set are secondary to how the user feels whilst using it. Unfortunately current WAP devices don't make the grade.

    IMAP might have a better feature set and better developer support, but I think that those who make the devices "user friendly" will obtain the market stranglehold.
  • The passengers, of course!
  • This always bugged the hell out of me. Japan has the coolest wireless technology around. Everyone over the age of 14 in tokyo has these ridiculously tiny, color, internet-ready cell phones. When I look at American cell phones they might as well be 6-lb rotary phones in comparison. Why can't companies get their shit together and go figure out what they're missing?

    Another interesting thing to note is that in japan, the services are offered by companies who license it to electronics companies. This way, you get one company focusing on offering great service, and other company pumping out kick-ass electronics (companies like sony, jvc, panasonic, etc, since that's what they do best.) Why did this model never make it here?
  • Um... WAP phones run over the cellphone networks, which are circuit switched. The server the phone dials up to then makes a connection via the internet to the server holding the pages. This connection is naturally packet switched. WAP runs over a circuit switched network in the same sense that a 56k modem dialup does... -Ciaran
  • 1. WAP really isn't documented anywhere of what acutally works and what doesn't. Not to mention that every phone maker out there is using something different, It isn't really WAP, it is the bastard first child of what will become WAP in the next 6 months. There is limited support for full form functionality. And the emulators don't work consistently, thus, the phones don't work consistently, get my drift. For the Mr Rodger's neighborhood people," Can you say Cluster F*CK!"

    True, though it is a pain to design a website that uses the latest HTML tricks that looks good on all browsers too.

    2. Speed burns baby! WAP, at best can handle 9600. Whoo! now that is a screaming technology. But that is what it was built for, recieving text, not graphics, not games, text. I-mode however has been built for speed. In Japan they are playing network games over these things.

    The article confused WAP with the networks it can run over -- WAP can run over packet switched networks just as well as IMode can. It just isn't deployed in fast networks today because the only fast wireless networks today are in Japan, where the near monopoly NTT DoCoMo has chosen IMode.

    When WAP decided to come out, it thought, hell, we don't need no stinking http protocol, we will invent our own called WAP. yeah, great idea guys, did you forget to mention that you are re-inventing the wheel here or were we supposed to see something great and new.

    WAP is forced to be diffrent by the crappy networks it must run over. It is not re-inventing the wheel, it is making a wheel that actually works.
  • NTT is a monopoly, but DoCoMO isn't. There are two other services - J-phone (uses MML - mobile markup language - they are moving away from it soon) and "au" who use CDMA1 and are WAP based. J-phone in particular are very hungry. Together they have 6.2 million subscribers, against imode's 11million. but the poster who wrote:
    It's about circuit-switiched vs packet-switched.
    got it right - I develop for imode and j-phone - and have played with the EZweb phones extensivley and it is the "always online" feel that is the key - and that boils down to the packet switch element. If imode can get that in the US, they will do well - if they have to use a circuit switched system then they have NO KEY ADVANTAGE. For many applications, developing for WAP/MML/cHTML just boils down to different templates to hit your database as none are exactly overburdened with features. Of course, when we get the java-capable imodes later this autumn, that is a whole different ballgame.... Here is a useful Japan Mobile Info site http://anima.editthispage.com/ for those who want to read up on it. Developing for these things is FUN! Bugger all memory, tiny screen, crappy keyboard - takes me back to the boxes I learned on (zx80) Nick (nick at kyushunet dot com)
  • While you raise a valid concern which undoubtedly is shared by many like-minded indivduals, what your argument fails to take on board is RESISTANCE IS FUTILE - YOU WILL BE ASSIMILATED!

    Sorry about that, don't know what came over me...
  • Actually, in the States AT&T Wireless's web enabled phones are all based on a CDPD network, which is packet switched.

    Note that you may not be able to use the voice network while connected to the CDPD network, but that's a different issue.

    WAP includes the ability to run on everything from connection based systems, SMS messaging, to CDPD or other packet based networks.

    But content is much more relevant than connection mechanism. After all, most people on the Internet today use a circuit switched system (analog phone line and modem) rather than a direct packet based system.
  • > Where did you get the 50% figure?

    Can't remember, but I'll accept that it was probably from some marketroid.

    I think what is happening is that it is becoming very cheap for phone companies to add WAP to their phones, and it is the "flavour of the month", so they will do it (see the Siemens C35).

    My impression is that any new phone introduced at the moment is WAP enabled, and this is likely to continue for the lifetime of GSM... It's simply becoming a standard feature like SMS.

    9600 baud isn't really a problem, considering that the maximum page size is about 2700 bytes, less than three seconds, well within the accepted limits. Some of the phone companies (BT in particular) seem to have their gear set up a bit poorly, and I have occasionally seen quite slow connection starts. From casual observation Orange seems to do slightly better (I have been told that the Dixons group seems to set at least some of the BT phones they sell to Freeserve).

    I have quite little confidence in GPRS or EDGE appearing in time to stop WAP from gaining temporary dominance of mobile "Internet" access.

    To sum up, my main point should have been that if you want to position yourself for mobile applications in Europe, there is no point in moaning about WAP since you don't just have the choice, and neighter do the users (with the exception of the phones with MS Mobile Explorer which do a reasonable Lynx style rendering of HTML).

    Janek
  • I've seen everyone being very excited about WAP and then everyone loathing it. I personally only see it as part of a necessary evolution of protocols, a good starting point for competing protocols to emerge and not necessarily a depracated protocol and architecture which just may have its own place in the wireless market, not from a bandwidth standpoint but more from a usability standpoint. Cellular Phones being the first widespread major non-desktop computer devices becoming "internet and web"-enabled I tend to question the virulent attempts to "make phones like computers" and mold them into existing models of user-interface and transport protocols while completely negating the various benefits consumers could get from a very basic user-interface to access very topical data.

    1) The WAP protocol itself, with focus on the Wireless Markup Language

    WAP is not a bad protocol, and I would add that it is a rather good protocol that meets the goals it was developed for:

    • Limited Bandwidth
    • Limited Screen Real Estate
    The wireless markup language offers great flexibility to interface with phones with limited capabilities. I've been working with it ever since its creation and thru its (at times) painful evolution. Interacting with a phone is quite different from interacting with a desktop computer and a mouse, a lot of out-of-the-box thinking had to be put into the development of this markup language, how to go from one screen to another, how to loop thru all the links within a screen, the concepts of DECKS and CARDS that let you minimize useless downloads of information and optimize navigation, the various ways to send data to a server through different input mechanisms, user-input validation to minimize errors and downloads. If thoroughly thought-out, a wireless web application working with the WAP protocol can be a very useful tool for every day life.

    2) Why WAP phones? Why do less?

    I personally, currently don't *need* to be surfing the whole entire web on my phone. Not right now. With work and personnal research I do from home and at my office, I already spend all the time I need using the Internet to its full potential. And I'd much rather like to be sitting comfortably in a chair at a desktop computer while I do all that.

    When I'm on the move and/or going out with friends, I don't necessarily want to have a full-featured computer in the palm of my hand. Not worth the money, not worth the weight nor the size of an i-mode (I bought the Motorolla StarTAC for its compact size). I know it's tempting, I'm all for snazzy gadgets, I do have quite a few, but frankly, I don't need it right now.

    However, I'd often be hanging out with friends and suddenly one of us would ask: "I wonder what's playing at the theaters located near the Derby, Hollywood, anyone up for a movie before going out dancing?". I get out my StarTAC Sprint PCS phone, connect, go straight to the wireless interface of my yahoo, go to movies, key in a zipcode, get a list of theaters in that area, pick one, see movies playing, pick one to get the times, and boom!: In a matter of a few seconds I get all the information I need. How's my EarthLink stock doing today? same thing -> my yahoo, stocks, select ELNK (which was part of my list of the portfolio I had set-up), see stocks details.

    • The nice thing about WAP phones is that they don't allow SPAM!
    • no ad banners
    • no useless images
    • clear, simple and well presented information: when you have such limited screen real-estate and bandwith, it FORCES web applications developers and interface designers to put a MUCH stronger emphasis on USABILITY, which a lot of web sites currently lack.
    The above are my usual replies to the obvious question "why do less when you can do more?" Hopefuly, with much-needed healthy i-mode competition arising, the price of WAP phones and services will go down. There might still be a market for those phones catering to more low-end users, people like me maybe. I would expect i-modes to be a raging success among teens, who as everyone know, will LOVE to be connected ALL THE TIME and do all kinds of entertaining stuff on their gadget. i-mode also seems a much cheaper alternative to computers + internet connection. Some other people already get enough connectivity at work and at home and don't need additional entertainment on that but wouldn't mind a phone that gives them the option to look-up some very topical information every once in a while.

    3) The Real Issues / Why so much hate?

    • a) Symptoms ...

      A lot of i-mode's hype among developers comes from the fact that "it does HTML!". Hurray, that means developers don't have to re-think nor re-do any of their site to cater to i-modes! Hey, being a developer myself and having dealt with quite a lot of markup languages I'm all for that too. Then I can't help but wonder: What would http://www.wired.com/, http://www.slashdot.org/, http://my.yahoo.com/ look like on an i-mode? How nicely do framesets render? What about ad banners? Does it handle complex nested tables? Then I read "well you should optimize your site to deliver 'compact HTML' or cHTML". Ok, now that makes a little more sense. You do need to rethink your site a little. At least you don't have to learn that very complex new markup language called WML, you might "waste" a whole half day of your life learning it. And the interface and site flow can pretty much remain the same! All valid reasons ...

      b) Diagnosis ...

      But I believe there is a much deeper issue that lurks around the corner when I look at the strong resistance from so many people to WML.

      -> Change <-

      A lot of people praise the i-mode because it is closer to already existing standards like HTML, thereby solving implementation nightmares. People will one day have to face the fact that HTML *might not* be THE answer to all web applications. Who knows what task-specific web-enabled devices will come out in the next few years? One can't guarantee HTML will the the appropriate markup language for all of them. I personally don't think i-mode and WAP phones are ready to compete on the exact same level because they don't necessarily serve the same purposes nor markets, yet I keep seeing people writing big controversies about "WAP vs i-mode". Over the last 5 years, a good part of the Internet community has learned to live with a now well-defined "vision" of the "The Web", with a well-defined set of protocols that are known and understood by all developers, and in the last year, with the demise of WAP, it has become a more popular belief that any "web-enabled" device should fit within that same original vision.

      c) Solutions ... ?

      People and developers will have to learn to live with the fact that new standards SHOULD and WILL arise, and that it's the only way we can build stronger, more user-oriented web applications. If we don't explore all options that are currently out there, how can we certify that our current standards are the best? "The Web" will evolve to serve a wider array of purposes, and it is not unreasonable to think that some of those purposes should be part of different protocols and infrastructures custom-built from the ground-up.

  • WAP as it is currently offered by european operators is crap because of the reasons you said.

    However, once the GPRS (Packet Switched mode) service will be finally deployed (around next year), WAP should become much more interesting.

    However, I still don't really understand why we could not just stick to HTML. After all most current mobile phones have enough computing power to run Lynx!

    Cheers,

    Angel
  • a whole word in kanji needs only one or two (16bit-) characters to be displayed / transmitted. so a japanese i-mode site can show much more content per screen than the same site could as english or -even worse- german WAP version.
    this may be an other reason for i-mode's success - besides the packet/circuit-issue. and finally it's not surprising for the country of walkman and gameboy to also have the smallest, cutest and most advanced cell phone technology. they just love these things, it's not only a question of content and if someone "really needs" it.
  • I word... Geography. Here in Japan, your phone will work anywhere in the country (provided it is in range). Unlike the US, your can use your phone in your local area, or if you are on business in some other part of Japan, your phone and phone number will continue to operate normally. I am originally from the US and found it annoying that I could not use my cell phone outside of my home-area. Sure I could use it in a roam mode and pay excessive fees, there are few agreements between the different carriers in the US that allow use of you phone from coast to coast. I am sure that I am not fully aware if that service is available at this time, but the price premium that you would pay for using that service would tend to restrict it's viability to only business users. I recently changed from NTT Docomo's i-mode phone to J-Phone's phone. It has web access, email, games, lots of features. i-mode was OK, NTT just doesn't have very competitive pricing for their service. J-Phone offers more options and plans to save money (while increasing their market share). Anyway, time to check the surf report on the phone...
  • They're not using Lynx, because there is more money in forcing you in to using their "channels" or whichever system they have. That means that they can attract more potential business by having pre-organized content for specific clients(companies).
  • Insightful, but I think you need to abstract a little more. The war is between industries. Computing vs. Telecom. The computing industry pushing the standards they know based on packet-switched networks, while the telecom companies push their specialty of circuit switched.

    Oh yes, the telecom companies also like proprietary patented standards like WAP and iMode, too. =)

    WAP may be a kludge, but 90% of phone companies are backing it. It's a kludge with clout and although I believe it will be displaced by widespread packet-based networks it will also push us years behind while we wait for the computing world to get behind a real standard and not one propped up by obfuscation or a created need. (WAP is supposed to replace TCP/IP to save on wireless bandwidth)

    iMode is just ridiculous. Yes, it's extremely successful in Japan, but that's not going to translate to the US market at all. Users over here are far more demanding and insist upon rich media, full bandwidth and whatever else the Jones' have.

    I *do* agree that the FCC needs to oust the UHF channels. Although, it's pathetic they auctioned off the UHF channel space and can't kick the stations off the spectrum. That ousting won't occur. If you read that announcement closely, the UHF channels have the option to renew after 5 years, you won't see them booted for a decade.

    Jayson Pifer
  • As long as the information stream is not controlled, people will use the extra information to make better informed decisions, which can only be better.

    There only is a real thread if the information is censored, incomplete, ... But then again, propaganda is always dangerous. Not only in a new medium.
  • According to the article, with I-Mode "the user only pays for the data that he retrieves and not for the time that he/she is on the Net."

    It sounds like I-Mode is still pay-per-access, it is just based on data not time. I'm not sure where the "pre-determined price per month" comes in.

  • Actually, it's a good thing. People are making more, better informed decisions with all of this communication. People are able to gather more information quickly to make better decisions. To have a 'hive' mentality like you say, you'd have to have some structure. The Net and cell phones are examples of the exact opposite. There is no organizaing structure whatsoever to these two systems, making communication more like a perfect marketplace. All of this communication is good! Enjoy it! Personally, I usually enjoy it, but there are times when the phones gets turned OFF!
  • Why moderates the previous post to 0 ?? Even Slashdot has given up publishing a WAP service because of the limitations of WAP !!

  • Not to detract from your attempt at fearcasting ...

    It's "forecasting". There's no such word as "fearcasting".

    ... but how exactly is making an uninformed decision about something superior to an informed decision?

    When it's not an informed decision, but instead an amalgamation of fifty different people's opinions, none of whom really know what's going on in your situation. This merely means that rather than going with what you would normally do, you're ending up with a kind of "lowest common denominator" decision.

    If mobile phones had been around three hundred years ago, do you think America would be independant today? I think not.

  • I don't recall the WAP spec having anything about requiring a circuit-switched oriented link. Hmmm ... seeing as it says it can use the FLEX/ReFLEX paging formats and PDC, I'd say the WAP isn't stuck in circuit-switched-land. (no, you can't have a URL into the PDF files on my machine)

    I think what is being seen is that WAP is being used in regions were the wireless networks are circuit switched because they were an outgrowth of wireline telephony. If that's the infrastructure in place, that's what you use.

    I also suspect that the pricing for WAP phones is based on the carriers attempting to boost profits. Competition has pushed prices down in NA, while NTT DoCoMo has been more or less a monopoly.

  • The estimate in Europe is that by the end of this year nearly 100% of all phones sold will be WAP capable (right now, it's around 50%).

    The next big thing (packet based no doubt) will take at least until the middle of next year considering the (lack of) speed these companies operate at.

    What this means is that for a content provider with compatible content (and admittedly there aren't a whole lot of those) there will be a sweet spot of about a year where there will be a huge number of people able to access WAP sites, but only a small number of really interesting sites.

    The revenue model is difficult if you can't cut a deal with the phone company, since it's practically impossible to fit any ads.

    It is also of course important to get in the field now to be well positioned once packet based / G3 services arrive. A lot of the challenges will be very similar.

    The difficulty of developing in WML (WAP) is largely irrelevant; not only is WML actually fairly simple, the environment (very limited capability phones) means that the real challenge is in UI design anyway.
  • RealVision will be releasing [yahoo.com] an add-on for the Palm V so you can use it as a phone on GSM cell networks.

    "The communications snap-on product will provide dual-band GSM (Global System for Mobile communication) connectivity to Palm V series handhelds, and an earphone jack to enable voice communications through a headset. The product is expected to be available in early 2001 for less than U.S. $299 when purchased in conjunction with a 1-year wireless service plan."

    The 'sled' will also send and receive data which they say "will allow those users to access a wide range of Internet content..." Nothing on whether it will support WAP or i-mode, though there is an inference that it may support the Palm VII "web-clipping" applications.

  • Actaully right now in the US, Nextel is one of the few carriers that offers a packet-switched network. WAP can run on packet-switched or circuit-switched network....this is not a WAP issue but rather a service provider issue. Also note that with a packet switched network where many users access one packet channel, it is not necessary that actual transfer speeds are going to be too high. Even with 3G tech, I doubt if the end user is gonna see rates higher than about 56k
  • 2. Speed burns baby! WAP, at best can handle 9600. This is bullsh*t .... WAP can go as fast as the service provider wants. If a provider were to dedicate 3 3:1 TDMA slots for a packet-switched WAP connection, you could probably get connect speeds as high a 19.2 k

  • Re:i-Mode will win (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 22, 2000 @06:36AM (#761543)
    2. Speed burns baby! WAP, at best can handle 9600. Whoo! now that is a screaming technology. But that is what it was built for, recieving text, not graphics, not games, text. I-mode however has been built for speed. In Japan they are playing network games over these things.

    This has nothing to do with WAP, but with PDC vs. GSM. When we have GPRS for GSM, we get higher data speeds for any data application, including WAP. If you would try to do I-Mode over GSM, you would get a similar speed, or perhaps even worse, since in WAP the data is somewhat compressed (I don't know whether I-Mode compresses over the air-link).

    3. When WAP decided to come out, it thought, hell, we don't need no stinking http protocol, we will invent our own called WAP. yeah, great idea guys, did you forget to mention that you are re-inventing the wheel here or were we supposed to see something great and new. Basically they made a system where the phone contacts the provider which has a server, the server goes out to the site that they want and looks for WML files, the server crunches them and then sends them back to the phone. (at least, that is the way that it is supposed to work, I haven't had anyone prove that it works yet) This is really great, so this is basically a proxy server going to a web server and delivering a page that they can see on thier phone. Why not just use the TCP/IP and go hit a web page designed for a phone. If a server is set up correctly and the programmer has a clue, they will do some client checking and send the phones to a greatly stripped down page were all they see is the text, nothing fancy.

    First you complain about the speed, then you want plain HTTP over TCP/IP! WAP was not just for the fun of getting a new standard, but especially designed so that it would at least be a little faster than sending uncompressed HTML over a data link (air link).

    Since WAP also includes terminal capability negotiation, the phone can tell the net that it cannot receive pictures, and then the WAP gateway will not send them. There are many such tricks that make WAP/WML much more suitable for browsing on small screens with varying capabilities than HTML is.

    I think that UMTS will solve most of the problems that people have with WAP, since these problems are caused by the data speed available in GSM. WAP (especially WML) can be used for UMTS as well as for GSM, except that you replace the lower protocol layers.

    Since almost all mayor phone manufacturers support WAP, I do not think that I-Mode will have success in Europe. The underlying protocol layers that make I-Mode attractive (including always-on) are not supported by current mobile (GSM) networks in Europe, and will not be available until we get UMTS.

    I agree that WAP is just an intermediate phase, because we have low data rates and really small screens. As soon as we get really cheap and light head-mounted displays and UMTS, there is no need for WAP anymore. But I-Mode will become obsolete at that time as well!

    *Truusje

  • Um, I disagree about handset usage.
    BT Cellnet in the UK predicted at the start of the year that it would sell 500,000 handsets by the end of August. It claims to have sold 250,000 at present. I've also heard reports of users returning the handsets (in this case Nokia 7110) because they don't like using them - basically because access is slow (9600 baud) and negotiating connections is incredibly time consuming, _before_ you get to the content.
    On top of that, of the seven mobile phone users in my office at the moment (and yes, we are gadget fiends) there are three WAP handsets. One was a freebie. None of them are actually set up for WAP. The handsets _could_ be out there, but the usage isn't.
    The advent of GPRS and, to a lesser extent, EDGE networks will remove this barrier, but the damage has already been done. WAP was marketied in the UK as the Internet on a phone. It's not, and people now think it's tosh. That is one very big marketing hurdle to overcome.
    Where did you get the 50% figure? Not even Forrester quoted that to me...
    Ben

  • Some errors in the article (Score:4)

    by A Big Gnu Thrush ( 12795 ) on Friday September 22, 2000 @06:39AM (#761545)
    I am by no means a supporter of WAP. It's the worst possible choice, except for all the others. I develop for WAP, but only because that is where the market is.

    That said, I had some problems with the article.

    First, the article states that WAP is targeted at premium users, but WAP access is really cheap. At least where I am. Verizon (c.f. worst possible choice) gives me WAP access for 4.95 / month additional to my normal rate and the phone only cost $30. Now I did have to sign the next 12 months of my life away, but that's Verizon for you.

    Second, i_Mode's packet switching, always on, may be wonderful, but the best part of WAP is it works with existing networks. Verizon did not upgrade their network, they just added WAP servers. Much more attractive on a price level - for both consumer and provider.

    Third, WAP is designed for low bandwidth cell phone use, but there's no reason why it can't scale to greater bandwidth or processing power. It has limits, but they haven't been reached.

    That said, don't let this post sound like an endorsement of WAP or (good, God!) Verizon. The WAP consortium, or whatever, has developed a proprietary and abusive standards process and Verizon only occasionally gets my bill correct, not to mention the www.myvzw.com site blows chunks. WML isn't pretty and the implementations are worse. But it's here now and it's cheap.

    That's why the web exploded in the first place. No one thought Netscrape was great, but it worked. No one thought dialup (or AOL) was great, but it worked, and people used it. Then better faster, cheaper solutions came along. The same will happen with wireless web.

  • After reading this article, I went out looking for the official announcement that DoCoMo was planning on moving into the American and European market. I couldn't find it. I didn't even see anything on the DoCoMo website. Has anyone seen it, and can you tell me where to get it?
  • I'd buy a clock radio if it adequately did the job of both a clock and a radio - most clock radios do, so no problems there.

    But what are WAP and iMode aiming at? Let's see...

    1) Ease of use. Uh-oh. 10-digit keypad with 3 presses to get the "C" key? No thanks, I'm not typing in URLs with that! Shitty little screen? No thanks - I like to be able to see things, and I wouldn't demean my website by trying to display it on that. Why design a cool website when all you can really display on a WAP phone is text?

    2) Mobile Internet access. Well, everything on the Web is HTML, so that's screwed for starters - you can only get access to a select few sites. Most places have tried it, decided it sucks and abandoned the idea. Email? Well that may be OK, but you can send SMS messages from a normal phone if you really need to, and if you need full-on email you're better with a laptop and a modem. Oh, and you can't read any attachments to your email - so sorry.

    3) Desirability. This worked in Japan bcos the Japanese (children in particular) are culturally prone to fads. Here today, gone tomorrow. Anyone own a Tamagotchi, and still plays with it? Thought not.

    4) Price. It's much more expensive than a normal phone, and you're tied in for a contract length. Keep that up for a couple of years, and you could have bought a PDA, or a second-hand laptop.

    So let's see what we've got, and the implications for the WAP phone:-

    1) It's small like a PDA. Good.
    2) It hasn't got the functions of a PDA. Bad.
    3) Regardless of the hype, there's almost no sites you can visit with it. Bad.
    4) Its user interface is appalling - worse even than PDAs. Bad.
    5) You can attach a normal mobile to a laptop, and get full Internet access. Bad.
    6) There's SMS messages on normal phones which act like email, and some (eg. Nokia) even have proper keyboards. Bad.

    So in other words, there's nothing a WAP phone will do that other things can't, and it does everything significantly worse than other appliances already available. And it's much more expensive.

    Would you buy a clock radio that didn't display the hours, could only do AM radio, and cost $100? Cos that's what WAP phones are trying to sell you. You want to buy one, go ahead. There's always plenty of suckers in the world who'll fall for marketing hype - sheep are made to be sheared. But being on /. I would like to hope that folks can think for themselves.

    Grab.
  • It seems like there is a lot of confusion as to what WAP really is. WAP is a protocol....so all you guys who think WAP only works on circuit-switched networks are wrong. WAP will run on circuit or packet switched networks....just because the current implementation of GSM only supports WAP on circuit-switched networks, doesn't mean WAP wont work on a packet-switched network. Infact, in the US, Nextel already has WAP on a packet-switched network. All that is needed for WAP to be supported on a packet-switched network is a RF channel for packet data and a some sort of data gatway that will do all the packet switching between the phone and the internet.

  • UK WAP, terrible implementation, letency (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    As mentioned, my WAP phone makes a data call so if I spend a minute reading the two sentences worth of text it downloads in each go it costs me 10 pence (15cents). It makes a standard PPP connection so I plugged in a data cable and pinged the WAP gateway. Ping time to the first hop varies from 800ms to 3seconds. Now I know why when I select a link it takes 10 seconds for the next two sentences of text to appear.

    I'v tried reading slashdot via the google html>wap gateway. The main page is split into about 100 parts of half a sentance each. To get the next part I have to press down down, down, down, down, down, down, down, link, wait 5-10 seconds, read for 1 second, down, down etc.
    3 pounds ( USD5 ) later I had got half way down the page and gave in.

    BT cellnet have spent millions on TV advertising and almost nothing making their system work properly. Their WAP service simply dosn't work. Their own homepage is often host not found. Most WAP links lead to an internal server error.

    The whole buisness model for commercial operators of WAP sites is broken. Its impossible to show banner ads so they can't get any revenue in.

    My WAP phone gets allocated a reserved-for-LAN's
    IP address. I'v done a few ping scans and seen 50
    odd phones in use at peak times.

    Their are lots of WAP phones in circulation in the UK but very few people are actually using it.
    Nobody who has tried it has anything good to say about it.
  • "WAP just isn't for me, as it brings back the pay-per-online-time horror which I am so happy I could leave behind(cable-modem rules!)"

    I use AT&T's pocketnet service which unlike sprint you can stay connected all day if you want and you get charged a flat rate. The service works well in most major cities and gives me enough of what I need from the web to get along just fine.

    --Malachi

  • Your comment really made my point [slashdot.org].

    Web developers are guna have to realize one day that there will be other platforms and user interfaces than desktop computers running Internet Explorer or Netscape and HTML being "the" markup language of choice for all devices.

    People need to start thinking out of their box and be more open-minded to emerging standards that fit specific interaction purposes between users and the "The Web" instead of making all devices fit within already existing standards.

    Evolve and start moving away from everybody's pre-conceived idea of "The Web"

    HTML/XHTML were built from the ground up with Desktop Computers and Mouse in mind within a windowed environment, and this even extends to various versions of Event Handling and Document Object Model implemented in Netscape and IE with concepts like "onmouseover" and "Window". I'm really curious to see how the recent efforts by the WAP community to integrate XHTML as part of their protocol will pan out. I'm fairly skeptical right now and see it as a mere attempt to make "web developers" feel good about WAP (which really could use some added popularity these days) by giving them a false sense of security by throwing at them acronyms they know they master.

    Do YOU really think those metaphores will always apply to upcoming devices?

    i-mode managed to "CRAM" existing metaphores and standards to a handheld device they call a cellphone, let's see if usability wins here, maybe it will.

    But that doesn't mean the WAP efforts should be discarded, I think they're the first groundbreaking effort for web-enabling non-computer devices, because after all, i-mode is just a smaller version of a computer on which they added cell-phone capabilities.

    You WILL have to learn new markup languages, new protocols, new standards if you want to cater to more devices than your competitors.

    By the way ... I'm a web developer too ;-P

  • With the rising of highspeed wireless networks like UMTS, there soon will be no need to serve low bandwith cookie cut pages like wap and inode

    XML, UMTS (64Kb/s on wireless phones) will kill those soon.

    Hugs SlashDread
  • the next generation of i-mode phones will be wap enabled....i imagine that eventually there will be a bunch of phones capable of delivering i-mode type content (i.e. graphical, easy to use, maybe, maybe not if it isn't in cHTML) using WAP as a transport layer.
  • WML is not a sub-set of XML, it is an implmentation of XML. I think the idea of using XHTML instead of a totally new XML dialect (WML) is a good one.

    Just to nitpick a bit: WML is not an implementation of XML; it is an application of XML. So the devices need to parse XML, because WML is a set of XML tags/attributes, but the tags/attributes, their relationships and semantics are what's defined by WML.
  • in the uk, i had the new nokia 7110 wap-enabled phone... when it came out in the spring - i gotta say it was great compared to what we had before - for those of us who knew iobox.com etc, we could actually send and recieve email from our phones via sms, but everyone else had to make do with sms... so i came to japan for a year in the summer, as soon as i got here, i got one of the loverly imode 64k "Dochimo" that is, PHS and Mobile in one - with that came 256colour screen, online rpg games (in MUDs), email et al, imode web surfing - its fantastic! and not too expensive either (i even think it was cheaper than my wap in the uk). anyway, id choose imode anyday - packetswitched has prooven itself via the Internet anyhow... i dunno how its gonna come in the uk or us - japan is ridiculously cheap for electronics (eg: a new AMD k6-2 500 is \2500, which is about 12quid, or $20, a new SGI visual workstation running on NT with dual PIII 450s and 256Mb Ram plus 20"monitor is 700pounds, MDs are about 70pounds etc etc...anyway its cool - i pay 30 pounds/month for cablemodem+tv.) i hope uk and us can match imode`s prices, cos im starting uni next year in london (^o^) um, yeah, so thanks for listening to my 2nd ever post ZeRO
    • 1. WAP is documented very well. Their document's are as wonderfull as those one might wade through at the
    • IETF [ietf.org]. WAP is proprietary and deviates from known standards in places it should have and others it shouldn't have. WAP also includes some very nice stuff which will no doubt make it's way back into IETF such as SOME of the WTLS (WAP TLS) work.

      2. Umm. I don't think anything bars you from running WAP over faster carriers - except the existence of the infrastructure to enable them. WAP speed will always be limited by the underlying carrying technology. What kind of voice bandwidth do you think you get on your Verizon Star-Tac? [It seems like everyone in mountain view has a Star-Tac]

      3. HTTP relies on TCP. TCP as it stands is problematic for unreliable connections (ask folks in china what it's like to surf). WAP uses WDP/WTP instead of TCP/HTTP. BFD. I agree they should've modded TCP/HTTP and TLS to suit their needs. The fact of the matter is that while I find the methods a bit distasteful - they are private companies with a plain economic agenda who had to develop variants of existing technologies. They did so and are now working to fold their mod back into the IETF - a much better place for standards to live once they're deployed. I think it is OK to develop proprietary protocols, deploy them, and then release them to the public for modification. This is one of the easiest way for society to benefit from private money's expenditures and I think we should encourage corporate entites which do so!

      The so called "NG WAP" will be based entirely (?) on IETF protocols. There is a bunch of support for this goal within the WAP forum which now has representatives from thousands of companies including all the key players. There is alot of work being done to ensure this can happen. WAP might pull it off :-) Or Not. I don't really care either way as I'm sure I'll have a G3 phone as soon as someone rolls it out where I am - and I'm guessing it'll be able to surf - WAP or otherwise.

      I've been to 4 WAP forum events - they are as boring as can be most of the time. Everyonce in a while RSA and Certicom have a party - but that's another story.



    -----
  • -- they both suck. Have you ever tried to actually *USE* one of these things?
  • That I actually start longing for a monopoly.

    Well, don't. I think the better will win and it's not going to be the wap. We must get rid of it, the sooner the better.

    Szo
  • ... is just to get a standard out there for everyone to use. As a web developer, the last thing I want to do is learn two more languages. Figure out what makes the most techical sense and stick with it. I'm sick of big companies creating headaches for developers(see the various implementations of ecma/jscript/javascript).

  • Right now, speculation of "who is better than who" will be overshadowed by "who has released the software/hardware/network to utilise it". I don't care if i-Mode is superiour to WAP if WAP becomes released first and gains significant marketshare. As a (very lazy) web developer, I'm going to concentrate on the 20% of technology that will allow me to reach 80% of the people, and not the other way around.

    Though, I've seen (and used) iMode phones in Tokyo. They're slick, but then, will NTT be able to ram i-Mode through the international standardisation so that I can take an i-Mode phone (almost) anywhere? Will the current international mobile nightmare finally end?


    --

  • Mobile phones == hive mind (Score:4)

    by flatpack ( 212454 ) on Friday September 22, 2000 @05:10AM (#761561)

    The rise of the mobile phone has given momentum to the idea that people can be permanently connected via a web of communication, day or night, 365 days a year. And now with services like WAP/iMode, they can not only be connected with each other, they can be connected with the vast amount of data found online.

    Does anyone else see the dangerous parallels between this and the actions of a hive mind? People are becoming less autonomous, more used to communicating their plans and ideas with others and receiving feedback before acting. Rather than allowing us to share information, mobile phones are acting as mechanisms which dampen individual creativity and instead encourage people to conform to the hive.

    And with the advent of WAP/iMode, this trend is only getting worse. Why think for yourself when a premade answer is only a few button presses away? Sooner or later people will learn to stop thinking at all, for they will be connected to a grid in which everybody else can do their thinking for them. And rather than the wonderful quantities which make us unique, we'll all be drones, revelling in our powers of "communication".

    No thanks, leave me out of this "revolution" in communication.

  • It's times like this... (Score:4)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 22, 2000 @05:03AM (#761562)
    That I actually start longing for a monopoly. For infrastructure as important as wireless I can't stand seeing twenty friggin' towers and yet not a one is for my particular cell phone cause I can't find a signal.

    Monopoly...wireless everywhere...then deregulation. That's the ticket.
  • There are 3 main problems with WAP, as I see it:
    1) The connection speed is way too slow and flaky. A friend of me has tried to get a WAP portal going, Talkfolio, apparently your web experience is greatly limited by bandwidth - kind of like watching TV in black and white.
    2) Acceptance - very few major websites out there have a "WAP Option"
    3) WAP devices _suck_. It's like trying to look at the internet through a keyhole. What the killer appliance IMHO in this instance is a gameboy, palmpilot and mobile phone all rolled into one. That way you get a decent screen, your connection, and pluggability so you can put a folding keyboard on it, or use graffiti. The lack of a mouse device and keyboards on WAP phones just cripples the device. Cool toy, but I can already receive and send email on my mobile easily. If you want me to have mobile web, it's got to be easy to use.
    I think people are expecting too much from WAP at the minute; it's been overhyped and people are expecting a full on internet experience, which it just isn't.

    Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.

  • iMode is the clear winner here. Larger feature set, easier software implementation. Gaining momentum.
  • i don't know and i don't really care. They can do what ever they want with wireless phone web junk. If I get up from my computer, it's usually because I'm sick of surfing the web. Besides, who really needs to be able to surf the web while they drive done the road?
  • ... you'll just stand back and wait for the winner to emerge. Don't end up being Betamax man, even if it is the better technology... ;)
  • Has everyone missed an essential element here? Why does anyone want one of these gadgets anyway?

    If I want a mobile phone, I'll buy a mobile phone. If I want to do mobile computing, I'll buy a laptop. If I want a pocket-sized computer, I'll buy a PDA. Maybe a PDA or a laptop with an integrated cellphone-modem would be neat. But who cares about WAP phones? They're crap and pointless. The screens are shite, you can't type easily on them (come on, you can't pretend you're going to send long messages off a 10-button keypad! 3 clicks for letter "C", etc.) and generally it's all a complete abortion.

    I have to say, there's only one group of ppl who'd buy this rubbish, and that's SUCKERS! Or gear-heads, which amounts to the same thing. Anyone with an IQ better than a goldfish should be able to see through the marketing hype and spot that they're lousy products with no purpose at all.

    If you still want your WAP or iMode phone, I've got some lovely hi-tech pieces of polystyrene for sale. They're sprayed silver so they look cool, they're _so_ light, and when you hook them up to a battery, it lasts forever!

    Sorry to sound so Luddite, but it's all so pointless - creating stuff without bothering to find out whether it's useful, and then sending out the advertising flacks to drum up a market for it. If you /. readers, of all ppl, can't see through this then there's no hope for you.

    Grab.
  • Look, this isn't about WML vs c-HTML or some other matter of arcane standards preference. It's about circuit-switiched vs packet-switched. Which is like the difference between a batch-mode mainframe and an interactive PC. Or DSL vs a dial-up modem. It's no contest which is going to be the most popular with consumers and the most effective overall. It's the persistance of the connection that makes all the difference, not the data standard.

    WAP is just a kludge to make the most out of our terrible circuit-switched wireless infrastructure. If we had widespread packet-based networks that could handle voice *and* data (ie, not Metricom, et al) we wouldn't be having this discussion.

    But we don't have those networks. And if the FCC doesn't get it's act together and kick the UHF channels of the spectrum, we won't for years to come.

  • That used to be the case in the UK in the 80's....now cell phones (mobiles to us Brits) are so widespread they are more like de riguer playground attire for the pre-pubescent.

    --------------------------------------------
  • The author is right: WAP currently running over GSM is circuit-switched. Later this year GPRS will become available. As that is packet-switched, WAP devices running on GPRS will also be packet-switched. However, the current crop of WAP phones (i.e., GSM based) will need to be discarded when GPRS comes along. Yet another purchase, I'm afraid.
  • It does seam strange that now that we have finally built a massive on-line database of information, and services on the net in the form of html pages, we are going to build another one in a format, especially made for mobile comunication?

    Do we really want fundamentally different information just because we are mobile? personally a mobile way to read slashdot and imdb would be a killer-app, so why not make a mobile phone with a browser? some people argue that whit the resolution and color depth available on a mobile phone the web wont be pretty, but do I really read slashdot for the visual experience? and the graphics of the phones are rapidly approaching what the computers had back when the web was created.

    I don't know who will win this battle, but i can tell you it wont be a lasting victory
  • Wow, thats rediculously stupid. Here we are with all these modern digital phones and we are using ancient tech to trasmit data. How dumb. Thanks for clearing that up for me.

  • c-HTML vs. WML (Score:3)

    by joe_fish ( 6037 ) on Friday September 22, 2000 @05:49AM (#761573) Homepage Journal
    From the linked page:
    Another difference is in the markup languages the two use, i-Mode uses c-HTML which is a subset of HTML while WAP uses WML which is a subset of XML. Although c-HTML is similar to HTML and easier for Web designers to use, XML is considered to be the Internet language of the future as HTML has limited capabilities.

    Hmmm.
    WML is not a sub-set of XML, it is an implmentation of XML. I think the idea of using XHTML instead of a totally new XML dialect (WML) is a good one. (recent /. story [slashdot.org])

    The replacement for HTML may one day be XHTML, but not pure XML. XML needs some form of implementation to make it work. --


  • In Europe there is not a monopoly on wireless telecommunications. Most countries have at least two, usually more operators - in the UK we have four.

    What we do have is agreement on the technology. Pretty much everyone uses GSM, on 900 and 1800 (MHz?). My mobile phone is dual-band, so it'll work on both, so I can use it across Europe, with roaming agreements between my Telco and those in the countries I roam to ensuring that my calls get routed and that I get charged correctly.

    In the US HDML is a monopolistic standard already - pretty much all mobile phones that provide a WAP/I-Mode type technology contain Phone.com browsers that interpret HDML.

    In the UK there are the Phone.com WAP browsers, the Nokia WAP browsers and just turning up are new ones from other phone manufacturers.

    In Japan I-Mode is the main technology used, but again Phone.com have a market presence with their WAP browsers.

    So the problem isn't the monopoly (or lack of) it's the agreement over technology. And people are already agreeing (certainly in Europe) that WAP is a great technology; the biggest issues are the poor design of existing sites, and the lack of specification of browser characteristics which causes the big problems seen between Nokia and Phone.com implementations.

    ~Cederic
  • ...WAP, at best can handle 9600. ... I-mode however has been built for speed.

    Sorry to disappoint you: I-mode also runs at 9600 baud. However, it is packet switched and not circuit-switched which is a critical difference.

  • Anybody who lives on the internet the way I do has to root for i-mode over WAP. It's packet-based, which means you pay for bandwidth, not for connect time.

    It's especially important to remember that many people with no interest in owning a cell phone are interested in wireless data apps. These aren't just anti-social people (like me) -- these are people who can't or won't pay the freight for a cell phone, or need to communicate in situations where talking on the phone isn't appropriate. That's why SMS is so popular -- an SMS message is much cheaper than a phone call, and you send and receive in a meeting, a movie theater, etc., without provoking violence. I'm told that in some countries (such as the Philipines) thousands of people buy cell phones just for SMS.

    SMS, WAP, i-mode, CDMA -- none of these should be thought of as cell phone add-ons. The fact that they're built on cell phone technology is just historical happenstance.

  • Imode has 11 million subscribers out of 17.2 million phones with net access (J-phone and EZweb being the other two...)

    If you become a content partner you can take advantage of DoCoMo handling the billing (9% commission) for your pay site - BUT there are LOTS of restrictions as to how you can raise money on the site- no advertising (I think). So yes, being part of their portal gets you hits and allows automatic billing - but comes at a price . Other portals will certainly appear - there is nothing special about their portal other than that it is programmed to a button. Various companies here are working on handling billing for the "non portal" (wild) sites. When that is sorted, the extra freedom you have for being outside the imode portal will become more and more appealing.

    I suspect though that the GSP stuff may be available only to those within the official portal - which would ba royal pain....
  • I'm covering this from a European angle, so please bear in mind my thoughts are specific to this market.
    iMode cannot really get anywhere in Europe until an always-on service of some kind is launched. GPRS is being touted at the moment, but EDGE networks are also popular with some of the financial guys like WestLB Panmure because they're cheap and you don't need a hugely expensive license (or ubiquitous infrastructure) to set up and run them. EDGE networks in big population centres will do.
    WAP has been held back in Europe by two things; circuit switched communications at agonisingly slow rates and mismarketing. Circuit switched versus always on has already been debated elsewhere in this discussion, so I'll leave that for now.
    The marketing angle is interesting. Almost every company selling WAP has touted it as the Internet on a phone. users, rather understandably, have become disillusioned with this. In fact, one academic I talked to said that the telcos would be better off ditching WAP very publicly, even if they continue to use the technology, because the brand is now covered in mud.
    By the time GPRS comes out, version 2.x of WAP will probably be out, and iMode will have a fair amount of competition. This is not least because of the amount of time, energy and brains that developers have invested in WAP. A big switch between technologies halfway through a development effort does not a successful project make.
    The WAP forum and NTT DoCoMo are talking to each other. Scott Goldman, chairman of the WAP Forum, has said the forum is in talks with NTT engineers. The next version of WAP (WAP-NG) is likely to be a tighter subset of XML incorporating a lot of the bits and bobs that iMode has taught DoCoMo.
    One other point; at present there is no for mobile phone data. Location and timeliness will be the two big apps.
    Just my thoughts.
    Ben

  • cooperation, not monopolies (Score:3)

    by thomasrynne ( 114126 ) on Friday September 22, 2000 @05:57AM (#761579)

    Cooperation is a better answer than monopolies.

    Take cash machines. I want to be able to use all cash machines. Solution one is having one bank so all cash machines are run by the same company. Solution two is all banks co-operate (like the link network in the UK) now I can use virtually all cash machines but there's still competition between banks.

    I suppose mobile operators should co-operate and take calls from others networks when they're the only one avaliable.

  • I think I heard that AOL is in some talks with DoCoMo, but that was to put AOL on the NTT network in Japan. Many speculate that AOL might try to tie up with someone in the US to bring i-Mode here.

  • I think the payment mechanism is imode's killer app. When a consumer buys something, it appears on their phone bill. That's it.

    How good is that? all the problems with trust and ecommerce on the web (crackers/ giving teenagers across the planet my credit card/ strange foreign companies and banks processing my card...) all solved in one foul swoop for the consumer. They trust their telephone company to give them an honest phone bill. The telephone company takes the responsibility for making sure the third party companies are honest, takes the pressure off the poor wee consumer who worries about all of these issues on the net.

    Got to be a winner ...

  • USC (Southern California) - one of the first 3 universities to be threatened by the Metallica lawsuit allows a certain restricted use of Napster on certain machines. When they originally decided to ban Napster the legal department stepped up and said NO! - But not for matters of "Student Online Freedom" - If the University bans Napster, it opens the door to lawsuits from students, faculty, third parties etc. who are pissed off that the university isn't banning another site as being offensive, or bigotted, or whatever. Personal freedom is not the reason, protection from frivolous lawsuits is.

  • WAP is Crap (Score:3)

    by sulli ( 195030 ) on Friday September 22, 2000 @09:46AM (#761583) Journal
    I have tested some WAP devices and agree wholeheartedly that they're very difficult to use. Having to page through menu after menu after menu to get much of anything is a major pain and just not worth it - it's a text reminder of those godawful VRU systems that call centers use to make you go away.

    Palm VII and its cousins are a much better choice for "wireless web" (or wireless whatever) than phones. The larger screen and pen input are much more useful and user-friendly.

    sulli

  • There already is a standard.

    It's got global acceptance, and is designed around a philosophy that its' content should be viewable on any device, whether that device supports text, audio, graphics, or any combination thereof.

    It's called HTML.

    I agree, as a web designer you _SHOULDN'T_ have to learn another language.

    It's just a damn shame that HTML has been so polluted by graphic artists that people think it's a purely graphical medium.
  • Does anyone else see the dangerous parallels between this and the actions of a hive mind?

    No, it's just you, Neo.

  • This merely means that rather than going with what you would normally do, you're ending up with a kind of "lowest common denominator" decision.

    No, because you are free to accept or reject any advice that you are offered, while still factoring it into your decision. If anything, the problem is that you might skew the sources you consult towards ones that you know will reinforce your decision.

    If mobile phones had been around three hundred years ago, do you think America would be independant today? I think not.

    Well, Paul Revere wouldn't have needed a horse, for starters. No, but seriously, look at this example [bbc.co.uk]. Mobile phones are a nightmare for authoritarian governments.

  • As a PC developer you _SHOULDN'T_ have to learn anything but 8086 assembler - grow up !
  • Since when do Geeks feel that a tool used to connect to knowledge and information in the wider world equals mind control? If you don't respect yourself to be able to say "No" to people, including friends, family, and (ohmigawd!) employers, then don't blame them or the technology.

    Besides, once we have a universal WAP/Whatever service, and we have this stuff in the hands of street punks, we'll have an even healthier anarchy. And if you can't take the heat... just go offline or lurk. It's called e-mail.

    Or are you saying you don't want to check your e-mail, either? I'd *like* to be able to check my e-mail and chat 24/7 with a cute little mobile device. Give me this "hive mind" and I'll never stop working it. I'm hungry for it.

  • Take cash machines. I want to be able to use all cash machines. Solution one is having one bank so all cash machines are run by the same company. Solution two is all banks co-operate (like the link network in the UK) now I can use virtually all cash machines but there's still competition between banks.

    Guess what?
    We already have this in the Netherlands.
    I can get money with my girocard from an ABN-AMRO ATM and almost every other bank.
    And I can get money with my ABN-AMRO card from a postgiro ATM.
    So it is possible.
  • Do Japonese Technofads tend to spread here?

    Super NES started out there.

    Tamagachi (those anoying 'feed me' key chains) started out there. (arguably a techno-fad).

    Pokemon (definately not a technofad... although one I think we deserved after sending "Magic: The Collectable Card Game" out into the world :)

  • > but the best part of WAP is it works with
    > existing networks.

    This is obviously some interesting new usage of the word "best" I wasn't previously aware of.

    WAP allows the carrier to use outdated technology to provide poor quality service. So, you can retrieve a WAP deck (WAP pages come in decks, like hypercard, which may be internally interlinked) and it can take 30 or more seconds to connect and then retrieve the deck. Then you hit a link that points outside of the deck, and guess what? Another 30 seconds to connect and retrieve the next deck.

    I would much prefer a technology that requires the carrier to provide decent quality service.

  • Not to detract from your attempt at fearcasting
    but how exactly is making an uninformed decision
    about something superior to an informed decision?
  • When WAP 2.0 goes towards XHTML 1.0, this whole discussion will be pretty useless.

    Agreed, WML got hyped way out of proportion, but at the same time, what people don't understand is that cHTML and i-Mode has a unique position in that it was created in a monopolized vaccuum where most of the users don't have landline connections and there is only one telco and that's owned by the government. WAP was able to bridge lots of hurdles, from different governments to different standards.

    XHTML 1.0 will make it much easier to create wireless services, plus will have the ability to support all of the images, sounds, movies, etc. that we've been hyped to expect.

    for more info on the WAP 2.0 and XHTML 1.0 announcement, go here...
    http://www.infowo rld.com/articles/hn/xml/00/09/14/000914hnwap.xml [infoworld.com]

    "The next major version of WAP, a protocol for providing Internet-based data services on mobile phones, will complete a migration to XHTML (Extensible Hypertext Markup Language) and TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) as the foundation of the technology, which will make it easier for developers to write WAP applications, said Michael Short, director of international affairs and strategy at BTCellnet, in Slough, England, and a member of the WAP Forum board of directors."

    "The group, which has more than 580 member companies and hosted about 700 delegates here, is also making progress toward enabling additional services on WAP devices, according to Scott Goldman, chief executive officer of the WAP Forum. In addition to animation, streaming media, and music downloads, WAP will display color graphics, provide location-specific content, and allow users to synchronize information with personal information manager software on a desktop PC in a remote location."

  • For either WAP or iMode to catch on, content needs to be available in the format. One of the secrets to iMode's success in Japan is that DoCoMo created a way to pay web content creators for making their offerings available on iMode via a billing system that charges users a few pennies (or more, as the case may be) for accessing horoscopes or news or whatever else. The billing is integrated into the monthly iMode bill with the content creators then paid by DoCoMo so there are no collection issues.

    Some Japanese content creators credit DoCoMo with finally creating a profitable business opportunity for web content creators. That kind of buzz, especially in this business climate, will be worth a lot.

    ==
    www.sitesherpa.com [sitesherpa.com]

  • WAP vs. i-Mode: dial-up vs. always online (Score:4)

    by Idaho ( 12907 ) on Friday September 22, 2000 @05:23AM (#761595)
    WAP just isn't for me, as it brings back the pay-per-online-time horror which I am so happy I could leave behind(cable-modem rules!)
    And then consider it's much higher cost, and lower speed than your normal modem.

    I think i-Mode's packet switched, always online network with a pre-determined price per month sounds much more attractive. And then I'm not even talking about the extra graphics possibilities!
  • The speed problem is more about the cell towers than the actual protocol. The US lags behind Japan in this area, changing to I-Mode won't help.

    Another thing, what's wrong with looking through a keyhole that makes everything look black and white? It's not quite as nice, but the palm pilot is exactly that: a trimmed-down, black and white way to do addresses, todo lists, and little notes. Yet people love it. It's certainly not a replacement for a desktop, but the portability makes it very useful.
    --

  • WAP will no doubt make it in Europe (at least in The Netherlands, where I live). All of the phones you buy here that have Internet capabilities are WAP phones. I even hadn't heard of iMode until this article. So there wont be a "Big Cell Fight". There is nothing to battle over, everybody in Europe already has a WAP phone...
    However, I'm not sure what will happen next. UMTS licenses are being auctioned now in different European contries, and the telecom companies are offering huge ammount of money, so we'll probably see a mone for UMTS phones anytime soon...
  • The main reason for this is the kind of network the two use; WAP uses circuit switched network while i-Mode uses packet switched data network, which is more suited to transferring data than circuit switched networks. Also, the packet based network contributes to the ?always on? nature of the i-Mode

    I can't believe WAP uses real circuit switched networks! This has to be a misunderstanding of this author. I don't know the details of WAP, but can anyone confirm that it doesn't use circuit switched networks? Perhaps the author misinterpreted something.. perhaps WAP phones make a dedicated connection to a WAP server for a certain amount of time, and the author interpreted that as circuit switched. Any know know any details?
  • They'll never manage to cram 21million users on their network. They're already having performance problems. I think that they're not even accepting new subscriptions due to this (last time I heard anyway). I'm also hearing rumours that DoCoMo are considering switching to WAP (from people working with the UMTS rollout in Tokyo).

  • WAP works over packet switched as well as the existing modem-esque system. The biggest problem in Europe is that the phone networks (well, in the UK anyway) aren't providing a packet based service. When 2.5G and 3G phones are generally available you'll find WAP working pretty happily on packet based networks.

    Plus of course, pricing structure is completely and totally unrelated to delivery mechanism. I get 50 minutes a day of free calls from my phone. Yet I have to pay for WAP access, even if I have free calls available. The provider is charging according to the type of call. If it was beneficial to them, they could easily charge me nothing at all for WAP calls, or charge a fixed fee a day with no online charges, etc. There is plenty of scope for innovation amongst the phone companies on how to charge for WAP/I-Mode type services.

    The "lower speed than your normal modem" is just so not relevant on a mobile phone. If you're using your Palm or notebook to view webpages, and your mobile is merely acting as a modem, then yes, that's an issue. But the typical use of WAP type technologies in the states and in Europe are for activities like checking stock quotes and reading email. And 9600baud is more than adequate for that (and we're not exactly going to be stuck at 9600 for very long..)

    ~Cederic
  • iMode is packet based while WAP is circuit based.
    We're currently using circuit based systems in Europe and parts of the US - Can't say for anything other than GSM.

    These systems simply can not support iMode - as packet based systems arive - g2.5 as they've been nicknamed - we will have a micture of circuit and packet based systems on the samenetwork and will want a system that will work on both. This will be WAP or the next version of it.

    Once we have the full g3 and 2Mbps to your device system we'll have gone mostly over to packet based networks however circuit based systems will still be in place for backup and times where more capacity is needed - so we'll still need a systems that works with that.

    By the time all of this has happened we'll be using devices far removed from the Nokia 7110 and Ericsson T28 and WAP will most likely be at version 2.something or 3 and have a greatly expanded feature set.

    What we're running with now is akin to the first version of Lynx and a work wide web where 9600 baud is a fast link. Things will improve but iMode will not replace WAP simply because there is too much of an architecture difference.
  • And if you want a clock, you'll buy a clock. If you want a radio, you'll buy a radio. But you'll never buy a clock radio...
  • Since Linux will fit on a watch, why not just put an embedded version of Linux in a phone to run a telephony application?

    Why let the telepolies once again tie our hands, rob us at gunpoint, and ask us to be grateful?

  • Although new phones are digital they are still circuit switched. As has already been noted, GPRS is being deployed to add packet switching for data. But circuit switched connections for voice traffic will be around for quite sometime. Standardisation is currently underway to define an All-IP Mobile network using things such as SIP, H.232, etc. But these networks will not be in operation for many years to come.

    For more information on what is going on in the standards arena, you may want to check out 3GPP at http://www.3gpp.org [3gpp.org].
    ---

  • I can't believe WAP uses real circuit switched networks! This has to be a misunderstanding of this author. I don't know the details of WAP, but can anyone confirm that it doesn't use circuit switched networks? Perhaps the author misinterpreted something.. perhaps WAP phones make a dedicated connection to a WAP server for a certain amount of time, and the author interpreted that as circuit switched. Any know know any details?
    You are correct : to access the "internet" through a WAP device you call the WAP gateway with your phone which is a legitimate phone number. You therefore get a dedicated circuit up to the WAP gateway which then forwards your requests to the internet the usual packet-switched way.

    I would however like to point out that to those who have not read the WAP specs that WAP is a protocole stack that comprises about 7 layers if I recall : the first few abstract the bearer (ie I am doing data transfer over GSM, SMS, analog or others and it's quite a kludge). Then you have an SSL-like layer and WML.
    The key point here is that "others" : realise that once GPRS (coming to an friendly operator near you as soon as october in France...) is out, you' ll be able to query all you usuall WAP servers out on the internet without the need to go through the WAP gateway except for HTML->WML translation with your new phone/network at about 2 or 3 times the speed, and THAT is really packet-switched once you have sent your first packet to the internet.
    Also, once UMTS is out, you'll be able to do your usual WAP queries (which are nothing more than "weird-HTTP" queries returning WML) to the same servers and get an even better service.

    To sum it up : it is a mistake to say that WAP is bad because WAP is not an implementation : it is a series of protocols that does the best with what is currently out there. As our wireless networks become more packet switched and faster, WAP will become faster.

    Philippe
  • Ok... first thing, North America is LIGHT YEARS behind the rest of the world when it comes to wireless technology. A small example here in Canada... want to hook your Wireless Palm Pilot up to ANY type of wireless network (to a cell phone doesn't count!).

    Here we have multiple INCOMPATABLE networks, CDMA, TDMA, PCS, GSM, you name it. North Americans can't seem to standardize on anything HELL, just look at HDTV. It's a GREAT technology, but nobody can seem to get thier asses in gear to get it working.

    Europe has been using different wireless services for years now. Anyone in NA ever use SMS? By the time we catch up to where the Europeans in a couple years, they will be on to the next generation of wireless. And it WILL happen unless someone bites the bullet, and decides to make the leap, and get the new technology in NOW. There is a HUGE investment in the current technology (same problem here with HDTV) and the carriers just don't want to make an investment that will be obsolete by the time they roll out the first installation.

    With GPRS, and 3G networks being developed and all the promises of high bandwith JUST around the corner, do you really think the limited WAP, and iMode will cut the mustard?

    You'll be able to have a phone that will not only be able to handle full colour graphics, but full motion video, multiple megs of memory, and basically be a small desktop computer in your hand. You think this is far fetched... take a look at Yopy, and Handspring!

    Marry a Yopy, and a Handspring, and you will get what I think will be the next generation of communications device. Notice I didn't say "CELL PHONE", as I personally feel that the cell phone days are numbered. The Yopy has the colour screen, and Linux operating system, and the Handspring has an expandable slot that NOW contains a cell phone! Take a peek at the TV show Earth Final Conflict. Watch for the communications devices.... sound familiar? Remember, Sci-Fi is usually the true window into the future.
  • You've almost touched on one thing I've found true when it relates to consumer electronics:

    Without the Japanese comsumer buy-in, the technology will be a stillborn.

    I remember the DoCoMo stuff everywhere when I was there last year. If they don't support it, it doesn't go anywhere.

    They seem to have a similar strangle hold to what Microsoft has on PCs.

  • WAP is documented. Download Phone.com or Nokia's SDK and try out what you want to do. Now is that so hard?


    WAP does not specify a speed. WAP works on 2.5 & 3G devices. Packet, Circuit and SMS networks. And probably a couple of others I have forgotten.


    When WAP (and its predecessor, HDML) came out 9600 WAS the limit. It made sense to trim the fat out of HTML. Now that it's not so important you see the adoption of xHTML and TCP, as we saw in last week's /. story. The technology adapts as the hardware becomes more capable.


    It's plain that you don't like WAP, but equally plain that you don't have any good reason. If you thought through the state of mobile devices at the time WAP was introduced you would realize that it made a lot of sense at the time.

    It is important to realize that WAP does not specify screen size or color capability, data rate, memory capacity, number of buttons or anything else. What you think of as WAP is just one example of a WAP device.

  • Sun has just "announced" J2ME (Java 2 Micro Edition), which they of course hope will be the next standard.

    The standard is called the mobile information device profile (MIDP) and will be in mobile phones from Motorola, Nokia, LG Electronics, Nextel and NTT DoCoMo.

    Story on java.sun.com [sun.com].

    Story on News.com [cnet.com]

  • Apparently the DoCoMo is the latest craze in Japan. Fortune magazine reports [northernlight.com] that the number of DoCoMo phones is growing by 50,000 a day! It's especially popular with teenagers, who use them to participate in chat rooms. Do Japanese technofads tend to spread here?



    --meredith

  • imode is a monopoly (Score:3)

    by fantomas ( 94850 ) on Friday September 22, 2000 @05:28AM (#761616)
    i Mode *is* a monopoly . It all goes through the NTT (national PTT ) network. If you really want to get hits on your site you need to get to be part of the DoCoMo content partner sites.

    Once you're part of that group you're going to get listed on the DoCoMo portal interface on the imode phone and you'll see your traffic multiply by 50 - 60 times (according to a speaker from m.Ogilvy, Japan, at a recent talk I went to at BAFTA in London).

    DoCoMo reckon that they will have 21 million users by the end of 2000, that's more than the number of people online in Japan via PC. Effectively the mobile phone becomes the primary point of internet access for more people than the desktop computer.

    So even if the medium is crap, it will have superceded the computer in Japan... better take these people seriously...

  • i-Mode will win (Score:5)

    by menelaus ( 6949 ) on Friday September 22, 2000 @05:29AM (#761618) Homepage
    I work for an internet company and we are currently working on a project to make our site WAP enabled. WHy are we using WAP, cause we have to. If we had a choice we would use I-Mode for several reasons.

    1. WAP really isn't documented anywhere of what acutally works and what doesn't. Not to mention that every phone maker out there is using something different, It isn't really WAP, it is the bastard first child of what will become WAP in the next 6 months. There is limited support for full form functionality. And the emulators don't work consistently, thus, the phones don't work consistently, get my drift. For the Mr Rodger's neighborhood people," Can you say Cluster F*CK!"

    2. Speed burns baby! WAP, at best can handle 9600. Whoo! now that is a screaming technology. But that is what it was built for, recieving text, not graphics, not games, text. I-mode however has been built for speed. In Japan they are playing network games over these things.

    3. When WAP decided to come out, it thought, hell, we don't need no stinking http protocol, we will invent our own called WAP. yeah, great idea guys, did you forget to mention that you are re-inventing the wheel here or were we supposed to see something great and new. Basically they made a system where the phone contacts the provider which has a server, the server goes out to the site that they want and looks for WML files, the server crunches them and then sends them back to the phone. (at least, that is the way that it is supposed to work, I haven't had anyone prove that it works yet) This is really great, so this is basically a proxy server going to a web server and delivering a page that they can see on thier phone. Why not just use the TCP/IP and go hit a web page designed for a phone. If a server is set up correctly and the programmer has a clue, they will do some client checking and send the phones to a greatly stripped down page were all they see is the text, nothing fancy.

    The japanese have thier stuff together, the question is, are we going to open our eyes and see it or are we going to get stomped in electronics.....again!

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