by Kevin O' Brady
Despite reports of its impending demise, the future looks promising for wireless application protocol (WAP) services, according to industry sources.
WAP has been given a bad press because of its timing and the fact that the necessary infrastructure for its effective delivery is not yet fully in place, according to Andrew O'Shaughnessy, managing director of E-Search.
"The audience is huge," said O'Shaugnessy. "It took a while for mobile to catch on and to take off, but it has had lot of investment and it will take off."
O'Shaugnessy declined to divulge precise figures, but said that WAP currently accounts for 40 percent of E-Search's business.
"It is growing at present," he said. "We expect WAP to account for more than 50 percent of our business within the next two to three years."
E-Search's WAP service allows users to search the site's directory, send e-mails and sign up for the company's e-zines
Although the particular technology for providing mobile Internet technology may change over the years, there will always be a demand for mobile services in some form, according to O'Shaughnessy.
"WAP was over hyped too soon," he said. "However, the speed of content download was unfairly criticised from the outset. The infrastructure simply needs to catch up with the service to be provided. When it does, WAP will be widespread, cheap and easy to use."
Entertainment Ireland also proposes to launch its own WAP service in February 2001, according to a company spokesperson. However, the company was not yet able to project the likely number of page impressions per month, said the spokesperson.
In the UK, BT's mobile Internet service recently reported 88 million WAP page impressions for January 2001, compared with 62.5 million as at the end of December 2000.
BT also says it is confident of further increases during the coming months. That confidence indicates that WAP's reputation as a low-speed disappointment could be unwarranted. E-Search's WAP service is at www.e-search.ie/WAP Entertainment Ireland's WAP information will be at www.ei4u.com/WAP.
