WAP - Key Benefits



The following sections outline how various groups may gain from WAP −

Subscribers

It is crucial that the subscribers benefit from using WAP based services. The key benefits can be summarized as −

  • Portability

  • Easy to use

  • Access to a wide variety of services on a competitive market

  • The possibility of having personalised services

  • Fast, convenient, and efficient access to services

  • To fulfil as many customers needs as possible, WAP devices will be available in various form factors, e.g. pagers, handheld PCs, and phones

Operators

Many of the advantages mentioned under "Service Providers" are be applicable to operators as well. The operator's benefits may include −

  • Address new market segments of mobile users by enabling a wider range of mobile VAS.

  • Deploy telephony services that in contrast to traditional telephony services are easy to create, update, and personalise

  • Use the flexibility of WAP as a tool to differentiate from competitors

  • Attractive interface to services will increase usage

  • Increased revenues per user due to higher network utilisation

  • Convenient service creation and maintenance including short time-to-market

  • Replace expensive customer care centres with WAP based services (E-care)

  • WAP services are designed to be independent of the network, implying that an operator who runs different types of networks only have to develop its services ones

  • An open standard means that equipment will be provided by many manufacturers

Service Providers

WAP opens new possibilities for service and content providers since they not necessarily have to come to an agreement with a specific operator about providing services to their customers. For example, the gains are −

  • Create a service once, make it accessible on a broad range of wireless networks

  • Address new market segments by launching innovative mobile VAS. Keep old customers by adapting existing Internet services to WAP

  • Keep old customers by adapting existing Internet services to WAP

  • Convenient service creation and maintenance

  • Creating a WAP service is no harder than creating an Internet service today since WML and WMLScript are based on well-known Internet technology

  • Use standard tools like ASP or CGI to generate content dynamically

  • Utilise existing investments in databases, etc that are the basis of existing Internet services

Manufacturers

Mobile devices supporting WAP will be available in many different form factors, e.g., cellular phones, pagers, and handheld PCs. Hardware manufacturers will also need to supply operators with equipment such as WAP Gateway/Proxys and WTA servers. Manufacturers benefit in the following ways −

  • WAP scales across a broad range of mobile networks, meaning that WAP implementations can be used in devices supporting different types of networks.

  • The expected wide adoption of WAP implies that economies of scales can be achieved, meaning that the huge mass-market can be addressed

  • The fact that WAP is designed to consume minimal amount of memory, and that the use of proxy technology relieves the CPU, means that inexpensive components can be used in the handsets

  • Reuse the deep knowledge about wireless network infrastructure to develop advanced servers that seamlessly integrates mobile VAS with telephony

  • Seize the opportunity to introduce new innovative products

Tools Providers

Today, we have a number of tools available for creating applications for the web. Content developers have become accustomed to the convenience that tools like FrontPage and DreamWeaver provides. Tools providers will be able to −

  • Reuse and modify existing products to support WAP or even integrate WAP support in existing tools.

  • Address a new customer base in the wireless community.

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