What Motorola (
Not only are the handsets expensive but download times are lengthy and information availability is limited.
When Liu Yin-rong (
"It crashes a lot," said Liu. "[WAP] is actually not as good as I thought it would be."
This sentiment seems common among would-be WAP users.
WAP, simply put, is the first step toward wireless Internet access. Taiwan's four major cellular telecommunications companies provide this service, which runs at 9.6kbps (kilobits per second), the same as a personal computer modem circa 1993.
Although nobody doubts the future of "the mobile Internet," questions have arisen as to whether WAP is a good launching point. The service is slow compared to what consumers have become used to on desktop computers. And the promised benefits of wireless mobile banking, stock trading and "m-commerce" (mobile commerce) have yet to become reality.
"I bought the phone for convenience, say for example, to check movie schedules," said Liu, "but it takes a long time to download information. I'd rather buy a newspaper and check listings there."
Liu also says stock trades over the wireless medium are out of the question. Information on individual stocks is available, but transactions are not.
"I don't even look up stock prices anymore," he said. "It takes a full minute to get a stock price ... and that's expensive on this [WAP] service."
Liu indicated that he now keeps his phone turned off most of the time to avoid paying the high WAP service charges required by local companies.
Mobile banking has been much the same. WAP users can access account information, but transactions such as money transfers are out of the question due to security concerns.
According to Ericsson (
Although Liu purchased his NT$15,800 cellular phone for stock trading and other transactions, all it has delivered so far is the transfer of simple messages and information access. And if industry pundits are right and the future of mobile Internet access is in general packet radio service (GPRS), which offers much faster access speeds of 115 kbps, WAP phones will quickly become a communication device of the past.
At Ericsson's "3G (third generation telecommunications) Global Symposium" yesterday in Taipei, Ericsson's marketing manager for Internet solutions, Anna Hultman, said that WAP phones will not work with GPRS. WAP enabled mobile phones are built for WAP services only. This means that WAP phone users will still be looking up information and receiving simple e-mail while GPRS subscribers are downloading pictures on their GPRS phones.
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