totaltele.com
[registration is free]
WAP to Email Race Hots Up
By Vanessa Clark
25 August 1999
As the wireless data market waits breathlessly for the release of the first WAP phones, developers are scrambling to be the first to announce applications to provide services to the customers.
Infinite Technologies, a U.S.-based enterprise messaging solutions developer, is challenging Dialogue Communication's claim last week that it achieved a world first with its transmission of an email to a wireless application protocol (WAP) enabled mobile phone.
According to Allan Carter, vice president of marketing at Infinite, the company's WAP to email offering has been in free service since April on the mailandnews.com website. In June the company announced that its service was the first to support both WAP 1.0 and WAP1.1, the latest release of the protocol. And for the past two years Infinite has offered an HDML-compatible email to phone service said Carter.
HDML (handheld device mark-up language) is a precursor to WAP and WML (wireless mark-up language). For those who like analogies; HDML is to WAP as DOS is to Windows, explains Carter. HDML was used by the early adopters, with WAP offering a seamless, easier to use service, he adds. The HDML can currently be accessed by handsets with Phone.com's UP.browser.
Infinite's email-to-phone offering, Infinite Interchange Wireless E-mail Gateway, works along the same lines as Dialogue's where a gateway server allows users to access their regular mail server using a wireless device. The gateway is aimed at both carriers and corporates and with existing mail servers including Microsoft Exchange, Lotus Notes and regular POP3 and IMAP4 hosts. Users can read, reply to, forward and delete emails using their handsets. Infinite's service also has a text-to-speech facility which allows users to listen their mail over a normal phone and reply by sending a .wav file.
The service is available for free on the Internet because Infinite wants customers and manufacturers to test it, said Carter. Because people rely on email to stay in touch, "I think email is what's going to drive the wireless market," said Carter.
However, the general public is still waiting for the first WAP phone to be released - expected to be Nokia's 7110 in the next few months. "Very shortly the gate is going to open and the market is going to explode," said Carter. |
