NOW-Gartner: the World's Biggest WAP Implementation To Date hosted by Gartner at the
European Spring Symposium
To reflect on the growing important and potential of mobile and wireless communications and to
give a practical demonstration of the WAP (wireless application protocol) in action, up to 500
delegates attending Gartner's European Spring Symposium/ITxpo in Florence have been offered
the opportunity to take part in a Wireless Application Protocol (WAP)-based interactive service
experiment, titled NOW - Gartner. The Gartner WAP project complemented a Mobile E-business
session track and expert panel that was also hosted at the Florence symposium.
The Experiment
500 Nokia 7110 WAP phones were available for attendees during the conference. Every phone was
equipped with a SIM card with 50,000 lira (about 20 Euros) of pre-paid use. Using these phones,
delegates were able to get information about the event (speakers, schedules, locations, exhibitors,
analysts, etc.), do real-time submission of feedback and session evaluations, access to Gartner
research (eg on Tue April 4 delegates received First Takes on the Microsoft vs. DoJ case ), get
encyclopaedic information about the city of Florence (hotels, taxis, restaurants, sights etc) and
access various business and news services. In addition, the application supported SMS e-mailing.
The data was updated constantly through the week from specially set up workstations in Florence,
so that to immediately advise delegates of late changes and breaking news - making the
conference a truly interactive experience.
This solution has been created by in partnership with four companies:
GES SA - have created and populated the database
HP - have provided an HP9000 N-Class server, running the WAP gateway software and immediate
application software
Nokia - have provided the handsets
TIM - Telecom Italia Mobile are the local carrier, and also the provider of the SIM cards and
dedicated ISDN lines we used for access to the server
On Tuesday, Gartner also hosted a special panel presentation and discussion where the vendors
involved explained how they have contributed to the project.
Lesson Learned: Wireless is Real But...
The experiment confirmed Gartner's view that at the moment WAP phones are not suitable for
mainstream mass use. The screens are too small and the navigation is cumbersome. Another
issue is the true speed of wireless data transmission. Many phone companies talk about data
transmission speeds of 115kbp/s or even 170kbp/s, once the use of the WAP protocol is
combined with GPRS networks from early next year. In reality, over the next 6 months WAP
phones will only deliver transmission speed of 14K bit/sec or less. Finally in Europe WAP menu
connect times can exceed over 1 minute resulting in significant end user frustration.
Today WAP devices and services can be used effectively only understanding and accepting their
limitations. I.e., network access to the servers in terms of speed, capacity and latency must be
adequately dimensioned and applications and content correctly designed to work within the
constraints of WAP 1.1 (i.e. the current version of WAP) and current phones. However, over the
next 12-24 months we expect a significant set of improvements. The future belongs to mobile and
wireless communications, by 2003 there will be 1 billion mobile phone users world-wide, and the
mobile phone will be the de-facto standard consumer e-commerce device..
Gartner plan to continue to give practical demonstrations of wireless and mobile communications
in action in future events. The first being the the Mobile and Wireless Conference in Barcelona on
Sept 11-12, 2000.
GartnerGroup Corporate Headquarters, 56 Top Gallant Road, Stamford, Connecticut 06904 USA +1-203-316-1111
Entire contents Copyright © 1997 - 2000 by Gartner Group, Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction of this publication in any form without
prior written permission is forbidden. Please read the guidelines and policies for GartnerGroup copyrighted materials. Privacy statement.
| GartnerGroup Home Page | My Home Page | Search |
| Site Map | Help | Feedback | Client Services | Log Off | IT Journal | |
