wired.com
Eleven additional companies have joined the Wireless Application Protocol Forum, a group attempting to establish global standards for accessing Web applications through wireless phones and data terminals.
Among the new members of the WAP Forum are Bell Atlantic Mobile, France Telecom, and Italy's Telital S.P.A. The group, which now has 71 members, was founded in February by Ericsson, Motorola, Nokia, and Unwired Planet.
Meanwhile, representatives from the DDI Corporation, NTT Mobile Communications Network, and Sprint PCS have joined WAP's board of directors, ensuring that the Japanese wireless industry will be well-represented. The DDI Corporation and NTT Mobile Communications Network together account for nearly 30 million of Japan's 36.5 million wireless subscribers.
Sprint PCS serves 177 metropolitan markets in the United States.
Supporters hope the addition of the key global wireless providers will ensure that WAP -- which is designed to extend Internet-based applications to wireless phones -- will thrive as a global standard.
The 11 new WAP members are Acer Peripherals Inc., Bell Atlantic Mobile, Bouygues Telecom, Dr. Materna GMBH, France Telecom, GSM Information network, Omnitel, Sony International GMBH, Tecnomen Oy, Telital S.P.A., and Unisys.
WAP protocols allow wireless carriers to provide customers with phones equipped with Web "microbrowsers," regardless of the type of wireless network the carrier is operating, said Bell Atlantic spokeswoman Maggie Aloia Rohr.
For example, software and devices built to WAP specifications will run over wireless networks based on any "air protocol," including those based on the CDPD, CDMA, and GSM standards.
"We don't want the customer to worry that the wireless device only works with one protocol," Rohr said.
In addition to wireless carriers, the WAP Forum includes a number of hardware and software providers, who are all using the WAP protocol to develop equipment and applications for the wireless industry.
WAP uses Web servers to feed Internet or intranet content to small mobile devices. This essentially allows any Web-based application development technology, including Sun Microsystems' Java language, to be accessed over the Internet using WAP's equipment. WAP is extending the standards to cover more sophisticated Web standards, including a wireless version of extensible markup language called WML (wireless markup language).
One of WAP's major goals is to fit Web content into the smaller format required by wireless networks and devices require. Wireless phones generally have poorer graphics and memory capabilities than PCs.
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