GSM Congress delegates push WAP products

The GSM World Congress is this week showing telecommunications operators the WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) way.

One delegate visiting Cannes for the annual show, Chris Leather, a senior consultant from Consult Hyperion, said around 50 per cent of the stands were touting applications for the WAP platform - which will link next-generation mobile phones to compliant Web sites.

"Mobile commerce gives end users freedom, because they have a wider range of merchants who they can do business with directly," he told Silicon.com.

Siemens appointed Yahoo! as its official WAP content provider and launched two Web-enabled handsets and its first mobile data product, the IC35.

Smartcard manufacturers - Giesecle & Devrient, Gemplus, ORGA Kartensysteme and Schlumberger - announced an alliance to develop a S@T standard that would bring WAP features to existing handsets via the SIM card. Virgin Mobile launched a SIM-based Web browser, to support the SIMalliance.

BT CellNet's Mike Short, chairman of the GSM Data Taskforce, predicted that within two years, all mobile phones would be Web-enabled, and that by 2005, more mobiles would be connected to the Web than PCs.

In other news, the GSM Assocation today awarded four telco operators with its first GSM in the Community awards. The joint winners - EuroTel from the Czech Republic, Far EasTone from Taiwan, GrameenPhone from Bangladesh and Telsin from Turkey - were acclaimed for assisting national emergency services after natural disasters.