New standard for Net access on mobiles

By Anand Parthasarathy

KOCHI, JUNE 15. The nodal agency representing over 500 leading providers of mobile phone services worldwide moved yesterday to create a new standard for accessing rich, web-based text, graphics, music and video on handheld cellular phones. The standard called Mobile Services Initiative (M-Services) will in effect, improve on the somewhat slow Wireless Applications Protocol (WAP), which has hitherto been the technology to bring the Internet to mobile phones.

The initiative has come from the U.K.-based GSM Association, representing mobile phone companies operating in 169 countries, who have adopted the Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM), a non-proprietary technology currently to be found driving over 70 per cent of all wireless phones in the world, estimated to number 537 millions. The manufacturers committed to implementing the new standard, include market leaders like Nokia, Ericsson, Alcatel, Motorola and Samsung - all of whose mobile phones are available in India.

This is good news for mobile users, who according to the Cellular Phone Operators of India(COAI) numbered over 3.7 million till April-end this year. While this is still only about a tenth of the number of fixed phone subscribers in the country, the mobile sector is currently experiencing sharp growth, almost doubling numbers every year - and is expected to overtake the subscriber base of fixed phones within 3-5 years.

When the WAP protocol was first announced 18 months ago, Ericsson incorporated the technology and introduced its WAP-enabled phones in India, within weeks of the international launch. However, subsequently the Indian subscriber has been slow to take to Wireless Internet and the WAP phone market has been a limited one.

The latest development holds out the hope that within a year or two, all new cellular phones will be wireless-enabled by default and in effect offer what is today known as 3G or third generation technology.

The new standard for GSM, which is the technology followed in most of Europe, Asia and Africa, does not however resolve a major irritant of globe trotting mobile users - that fact that the U.S. remains the odd man out: the majority of American mobile phone providers still operate on an alternate technology known as CDMA or Code Division Multiple Access, which is incompatible with GSM phones.

Unless the well-entrenched cell phone providers in the U.S. decide to join the global trend in mobile matters, a single worldwide standard which will one day allow a subscriber to use his mobile phone anywhere on the planet, will remain a distant dream.

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Section  : National
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