July 17, 2000 New Thinking:
Problems with WAP

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• It’s plagued by reliability problems – busy signals, slow connections, dropping lines, overloaded computers
• WAP suppliers are way behind in getting WAP phones into the shops
• WAP phones are very expensive, connection fees no less so – hardly good value
• There is a very limited number of WAP services available and many of them simply don’t work well
• Typing text using a mobile phone is not exactly “user-friendly”
• Credit card-size screens are a strain on the eyes
• Getting a WAP phone up and running can require numerous passwords and long spells adrift in telephone-support land
• Many WAP services have to be specifically customised for individual telephones – this is a hugely expensive way to create services
• Many phone companies are only allowing their WAP customers to access the services of firms who have contracts with these phone companies. Thus the limited choice in WAP services becomes even more limited

“Just how disappointing is WAP?” Almar Latour of The Wall Street Journal asked recently. “A couple of numbers from Deutsche Telekom AB’s T-Mobil unit tell the story: The typical owner of a WAP handset uses it to access the Internet less than once a week, T-Mobil says. The figures — the first usage numbers released by a European mobile provider — show that just over 1% of T-Mobil’s total wireless subscribers use WAP services.”

It’s not just in Germany where WAP has been a bit of a flop. Reuters reported that while more than 50 percent of people in Britain had acquired a mobile phone by June, “One cloud over the news was disappointing sales of mobile Internet phones, the future on which the industry has bet billions of pounds… Analysts said many users were dismissing WAP as over-hyped because of its slow speed and limited services.”

WAP may have problems, but if the Japanese are anything to go by, mobile services do indeed have a real future. Using i-mode, already 8 million mainly young Japanese are accessing the Internet using a ‘thumb-pad’ on their mobile phones (the number is growing at a million a month.) With i-mode you’re constantly online, and you get charged based on the data transmitted rather than connection time.

Personally, I can’t see myself accessing too much information over a mobile phone. But my children… ah, that’s a different matter. And they, of course, are where the future lies.


Gerry McGovern


 

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