The abbreviation WAP stands for Wireless Application Protocol. Wireless - because it works over the GSM network. WAP makes it possible to show internet pages on small, handheld devices such as mobile phones or palm organizers. 

Today, WAP is restrained by the low speed in mobile networks; with high-speed networks as GPRS, WAP will be more user-friendly. Look up in our buzzword list for explanations.

There are four major disadvantages with the WAP system:

• It is slow. Because the GSM network is used, the speed is only 9.600 bits per second compared to a normal home-connection to the Internet of 64.000. 
• WAP requires specially designed web pages. You can not access usual web pages because they are coded with HTML, the language of web pages. Information providers must build up separate web sites in WAP format besides the information available in HTML format.
• It is small. That is, the devices. The screen is small, and will always be, because that is the charm of it: you don't want to carry a laptop around, do you. The screen is limited to a handful of rows, which means that information must be carefully selected and designed to give meaningful, readable and user-friendly screens.
• It is expensive. You pay for connection time. After downloading the information to your mobile device, you still pay during reading of the information; and, GSM minutes are expensive.

So what is good about WAP? If anything? Yes, there are good things as well. First of all, information is available wherever you are. Secondly, it is easy to add new functions into the mobile phone by using WAP; read about some examples below.

Some examples of WAP services.

• Slow? With GPRS and the upcomping 3G network services, speed is no longer a problem. Unless you want to view video on the mobile, that is.
• Small? New devices have high-resolution color screens. Problem solved.
• Expensive? Increase in number of users and increase in speed has brought the prices down to affordable levels.

Go to the buzzword list.