By far the most interesting information about a WAP user, however, is physical location and phone number. Although it's unlikely that cell network providers will ever release their customers' cell phone numbers to servers on the Internet, location information is a different story, and, in fact, the WAP Forum is working on a standard way for Web servers to retrieve location information about cell phone clients.

Knowing the physical location of a user offers new WAP application possibilities. Sale-force automation is an obvious application where knowledge of your physical location makes it possible for a WAP application to feed numerous types of pertinent data to your cell phone display.

Direct marketing is also seen as a likely application in which users will opt to accept advertisements pushed to their cell phone in exchange for free services. The "infotainment" industry sees location-based technologies as an easy way to give consumers and business travelers instant information about restaurants, movies, and other entertainment options, as well as provide maps and directions based on location.

Once user location data is available to WAP applications, the most interesting applications will be possible on packet-switched networks such as CDPD or SMS, used by AT&T's PocketNet service. That's because packet-switched networks, the same type of networks that mobile pagers use, don't require a phone call to connect to the Internet.

In effect, they're always on, and can receive data at any time. In contrast, Sprint PCS's Wireless Web is a circuit-switched Internet connection, which means that your cell phone dials a phone number in order to access the Internet.

So-called push applications, which automatically send data to your cell phone when you want it, are possible using WAP. The Push Access Protocol, part of the WAP 1.2 standard, offers up a standard, programmable way of pushing data to a cell phone. In the United States, PAP isn't yet available, but similar, proprietary capabilities can be developed using Phone .com's software developers' kit.

Proponents of wireless applications like to point out that cell-phone customers are used to paying for services, unlike Internet customers. But whether or not customers are willing to pay for services, the opportunity for E-commerce vendors to extend access to their sites into the wireless space is too compelling to dismiss.

Similarly, with proper security mechanisms in place, corporate intranet applications such as E-mail and scheduling can enhance employees productivity via the convenience and ubiquity of the cell phone.

The fact that the United States must deal with three major bearer networks, CDMA (code division multiple access), TDMA (time division multiple access, and GSM (global system for mobile communications), while Europe only has GSM, is certainly slowing U.S. WAP deployment. But with standardized,

end-to-end security still on the drawing board, and location-based technologies even further away, widespread deployment of many interesting WAP applications is probably still several years from realization.

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