01 Aug 2000

Heralded as the brave new world of information-rich communication on the move, Wap recently had a bit of a climb down. But all is not lost; we should look to the future.

For neo-net-o-phytes, Wap is wireless application protocol, a technology that allows web pages to be delivered in readable format to small mobile phone screens. It is key to the mobile internet future that some of the biggest players are betting large packets of money on. But the dream has suffered a rude awakening. Frustrated consumers, through their media champions, chorus "wap is crap". The heretofore "killer technology" is suffering from new technology syndrome: it never works like the techies said it would. Downloading Wap content is painfully slow and anything useful or fun is pretty thin on the ground.

In the UK BT Cellnet sold just 200,000 Wap handsets by the end of June, well below the 500,000 it projected. UK mobile company Orange counted just 70,000 Wap users by mid-July. Meanwhile, the 'old' technology of simple text messaging, where you laboriously type text using your phone keypad, was going gangbusters. In July Orange was clocking six million messages a day, up 10 times from a year ago.

"Wap today is primitive," admits Hans Snook, the CEO and chief visionary of Orange, "but it is a giant leap from where we were not so long ago." The fact that mobiles haven't quite been able to "harness the internet" doesn't mean they won't get there. According to Snook, the future in communications is about taking your world with you, from access to your bank account to communicating remotely with your icebox. Of course, Snook hopes this future is Orange-tinted: he wants his Orange World portal to provide us with the tools we need to order around our fridges and access our emails while on the move.

The technology will improve: download speed will increase and customised content will grow. As networks upgrade, first to GPRS and next to 3G, the mobile worldwide wait will speed up. Either that or the money mobile operators are spending on 3G licences in country-by-country auctions will come back to haunt them.

Since the UK government took in a staggering £22.5bn for its five 3G licenses, the potential bidders have wised up and some have teamed up to spread their financial risk. NTT, DoCoMo, Hutchison Whampoa and KPN have formed a consortium to bid for and operate 3G licenses. Others like NTL will rely on being 'virtual' network operators, ie: they will lease capacity from a licensee. And others like Vodafone will take out bank loans and take their chances.

There are other innovations to make the mobile internet work better.

Start-up company Bango.net is launching a internet naming system that assigns numbers to various sites so you don't have to type in the URL (the http//www bit). Of course, once voice recognition gets going, we won't have to type anything - we'll just say it. Voice recognition already works on some mobiles. A 'virtual assistant' program, called Wildfire, is available to 30,000 Orange customers in the UK, and runs on the French network owned by Bouygues Telecom. 'She' sorts, retrieves and sends emails on your behalf and manages your calendar, all by voice activation. Orange thought so much of Wildfire, it spent £95m to acquire it. Then Orange spent £95m to buy Ananova, a virtual video newscaster.

Orange's idea is to position Wildfire and Ananova to be the faces and personalities that search the web and deliver the information you want in a familiar form, that the accessing device becomes less relevant, surpassed by the customised portal. There are many portals already, from Yahoo to AOL. These portals want to leverage themselves to be your gateway, regardless of the device used to access information at any particular moment. Hence AOL is launching AOL TV and buying Time Warner. AOL does not see its future as a PC-only portal and it believes that to win it must control strong brands like Warner's movie and music catalogues.

So too, Orange and Vodafone started life as mobile phone companies, but they are changing. As competition increases and the revenue from simply "making calls" falls, these operators need to move out of what is essentially a commodity business. Vodafone linked up with France's Vivendi to launch its Vizzavi portal. For his part, Snook wants to make his Orange World portal the one customers call up no matter what the device - PC, TV or the mobile. In July, he said Orange is negotiating to sign reciprocal agreements with fixed line operators, including telephone companies and cable operators, so he can deliver wherever we are. Ananova will follow us to the device we select, although her preference will likely be the TV: she looks better there!

These players and others want to be the portal of choice. The business will probably go through several different revenue models, moving towards a 'free' service supported by advertising and selected paid-for services.

And of course there's e-commerce, which analysts expect to reach $6.8 trillion in 2004.

What the AOLs and the Oranges want is to be the gateway to personal portals, much like the personal Yahoo on the PC, but miles ahead in flexibility and customisation. A co-founder of Wildfire, Rich Miner, told me that Wildfire usage goes up when people enjoy interacting with the virtual assistant. One example: when you sign off, she says goodbye. There is no need for you to say bye back, but many, in fact, most people do. How many of you say goodbye to your AOL screen when it says goodbye? I'll admit it if you will. Maybe Snook is onto something.