Packet Switching Types: ATM, Frame Relay, TCP/IP, X.25

Transmission: SONET T-Carrier

Services: [3G] [4G] [Bluetooth] [I-Mode] [WAP] [Wireless and packet switching]

icle is reproduced with the kind permission of Global Wireless: The International Newspaper to the Wireless Communication Industry. http://www.globalwirelessnews.com Copyright 2000, Crain Communications, Incorporated. This article appeared in the September/October 2000 issue of Global Wireless, Vol. 3, No. 5.

VIEWPOINT ON WAP

BY STUART SHARROCK, EUROPE CORRESPONDENT

Gun Control Time

"Portraying WAP as providing the ability to surf the Internet from your mobile is a mistake."

Shooting yourself in the foot is not to be recommended. But it seems to happen regularly within the mobile industry. The self-inflicted injury is almost always the result of a disconnect between the capabilities of a technology and the marketing of that technology.

Sometimes the injury can be fatal. Iridium was a brilliant technological achievement, but a marketing disaster. Stubbornly sticking to a decade-old business plan and failing to acknowledge the unexpected global success of GSM technology had fundamentally changed the market was not a good move. End of Iridium.

Japan's cordless PHS technology has fared somewhat better. Focusing on the superior data rate capabilities of PHS compared with cellular created a market niche for PHS technology. But that niche is now threatened by the success of the cellular i-mode service and will undoubtedly disappear entirely once 3G cellular services are launched in Japan.

Or will it? Will 3G services really sweep away all other alternative technologies lying in their path? The ability of 3G technologies to deliver unprecedented functionality in the mobile data world is not in doubt. What is in doubt is the marketing.

The omens are not good. WAP is already being slated as a disappointment. Again it is not really the technology that is at fault. It is the marketing. WAP in the GSM world has been launched on circuit-switched networks rather than waiting for GPRS. The resulting long call set-up times make WAP slow and clunky.

And they make it expensive.

Contrast that with the marketing of the packet-based i-mode service from NTT DoCoMo. A rich variety of content was put in place before service launch, it has affordable pricing and consistent branding. I-mode is described in the press as a "high-speed Internet access" service. A remarkable achievement for a 9.6 kilobits per second system that cannot access the full Internet.

Portraying WAP as providing the ability to surf the Internet from your mobile is a mistake. Portraying 3G in the same way is equally mistaken. But that is just what is happening. Vendors and operators alike are talking about 3G enabling the mobile Internet, or the wireless Internet for companies with a U.S. inclination.

Raising user expectations in this way could be a bad mistake. Offering the full Internet experience on a mobile terminal is not what 3G is about. Limitations on data rates and terminal displays mean the mobile environment will never compete on equal terms with broadband fixed access to the desktop. That is not the strength of 3G. The strength of 3G lies in personalized multimedia communications that can only be provided in a mobile environment.

Shooting yourself in the foot is not necessarily the end of the road. You can still hobble along on one foot with the aid of crutches. Characterizing 3G as the mobile Internet is like shooting yourself in both feet and then throwing the crutches away. The road to recovery is less certain in those circumstances.

http://www.globalwirelessnews.com

Editor's note: The 'I' in I-mode stands for information, not the internet. I-mode delivers information mostly from sites selected by NTT DoCoMo . Some say it is more like a corporate intranet run by DoCoMo, rather than the web, although you can, in theory, connect to any web site. To work fully, a site needs to be written in a stripped down HTML code required by the I-Mode terminals. So large companies like Disney have an I-mode compatible site. I think this HTML lite approach gives it an advantage over the off beat WML or wireless markup language WAP uses. Yes, it is slow but unlike WAP, I-mode is packet switched and awaits only higher wireless data rates to deliver multi-media content.

Packet Switching Types: ATM, Frame Relay, TCP/IP, X.25

Transmission: SONET T-Carrier

Services: [3G] [4G] [Bluetooth] [I-Mode] [WAP] [Wireless and packet switching]