Motorolas First Wap Phone In July

Have you been dreaming of finding out what is running at the theatre or have you missed your Palm in office and you can't check your mail? Well, all that is expected to change once Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) comes in.

And that could be sooner than you expected. Motorola is expected to ship its first WAP phone to BTCellnet _ a cellular service provider in UK _ in July, thus paving the way for a commercial commencement of the first General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) in the world.

BTCellnet has already completed successful tests of the new protocol.

The first lot of the devices will be one-plus-two terminals for WAP browsing.

Later this year, the company intends to introduce one-plus-three and one-plus-four phones, Motorola GSM Systems Division corporate vice-president and general manager Ted Hally said.

Motorola is also expected to launch WAP-enabled handsets in India in a few months and talks are underway with some metro operators for GPRS. Speaking at a press conference after the inaugural session of Exp@nding Horizons _ Motorola Incs annual interface with its customers _ Hally said the new system offers a plethora of advantages to both the customers and the service operators.

It offers faster connectivity to the customer, development of personalised services and cost effectiveness since the operator does not have to create a new infrastructure as GPRS can be implemented over the Global system for Mobile Communication (GSM) networks, Hally said.

Hally also predicted an enormous increase in usage. "For instance, there has been a 10-fold increase in some European countries where SMS (Smart Messaging Service) has been introduced. With GPRS, this increase will be further doubled because SMS is limited to small messages," he said.

GPRS is essential for the commencement of WAP services as it offers 170 kb bandwidth. Earlier, at the plenary session of Exp@nding Horizons, Haly said the 20 operators are trying the new system and the equipment has already been exported to 15 countries for trials.

Exp@nding Horizons is Motorola's annual feature and this year it is being attended by 73 operators from 43 countries, with Reliance as the sole participant from India.

It showcases some of the new developments that have been made by the company, which includes development of its communications architecture, Aspira; of which WAP and Bluetooth will be a part.

According to Motorola executives, Aspira would be the industry's first Internet Protocol (IP)-based wireless end-to-end networking solution. It combines voice, data and multimedia into a broadband network.

Once the architecture is in place, which is expected to take another three years, it will be possible to browse the Web, videoconference and access streaming multimedia _ which is high on quality _ on a handheld device.

Speed of implementation by operators, however, will be the key to their success, said operators and Motorola executives.

This will also mean a high churn rate of technologies, which could be as high as 50 per cent in case of the more advanced markets, senior vice-president and general manager strategic marketing Maureen Grezelakowski said.

New Connections

* BTCellent has successfully completed the tests

* First lot will be one-plus-two terminals

* WAP-enabled handsets in India soon

* Faster connectivity, personalised services, cost effectiveness

* Aspira will be first IP-based wireless end-to-end networking solution

* Browsing, video-conferencing etc on a handheld device