WAP Demystified

by Roman Kikta and Al Fisher

Published 1 October 2001
The Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) is the de-facto world standard for wireless information and telephony services on digital mobile phones and other wireless terminals. Initially developed by Motorola, Nokia and Ericsson, the world's three largest mobile handset manufacturers, WAP is an open, global wireless protocol specification based on existing Internet standards, such as XML, and IP, for all wireless networks. This work aims to provide a basic introduction to both the technologies and protocols that make up the WAP standard and the new business and marketing models based upon it. Without using mathematics or complex derivations, this guide should explain and annotate the standard, describe the new service applications and detail the use of WML to create applications. The accompanying CD-ROM contains WAP development software from Nokia, Motorola and Ericsson.