The Once and Future Wireless Internet

Microsoft once hoped that cellular phones and all other wireless devices would join the Internet, relying on the same protocols and content formats (e.g., the HyperText Transfer Protocol for data delivery and the HyperText Markup Language for Web pages) used by PCs and servers. (See “Microsoft Adds WAP to Wireless Strategy” on page 19 of the Nov. 1999 Update.) This would have promoted interoperability among wireless devices and networks and would have allowed Microsoft and other software vendors to port their existing Internet software to the wireless world rather than starting from scratch.

However, wireless phones today don’t use standard Internet protocols and content formats because manufacturers and carriers felt that Internet technologies required too many resources on phones and could not be adapted to relatively slow, unreliable wireless links. As a result, phones use a bewildering variety of wireless-specific protocols and content formats, including the Wireless Application Protocol (WAP), its proprietary predecessors from Phone.com, and NTT DoCoMo’s i-mode. Carriers connect these protocols to Internet mail and browsing protocols through gateways. While true wireless Internet services are available (such as the services available over Cellular Digital Packet Data networks in the United States), these services have relatively limited coverage areas and serve relatively powerful mobile devices like laptops and Pocket PCs that are not subsidized by wireless carriers and have not reached the volumes of cellular phones.