With the WAP technology, browsing through the sites has become so easy that you can access WAP enabled sites on your wireless devices. These technology is complied with the Third Generation Wireless Technology.

The wireless industry came up with the idea of WAP. The point of WAP standard was to show internet contents on wireless clients, like mobile phones.

The WAP protocol was designed to show internet contents on wireless clients, like mobile phones

* WAP stands for Wireless Application Protocol
* WAP is an application communication protocol
* WAP is used to access services and information
* WAP is inherited from Internet standards
* WAP is for handheld devices such as mobile phones
* WAP is a protocol designed for micro browsers
* WAP enables the creating of web applications for mobile
   devices.
* WAP uses the mark-up language WML (not HTML)
* WML is defined as an XML 1.0 application

The Wireless Application Protocol

The WAP protocol is the leading standard for information services on wireless terminals like digital mobile phones.

The WAP standard is based on Internet standards (HTML, XML and TCP/IP). It consists of a WML language specification, a WMLScript specification, and a Wireless Telephony Application Interface (WTAI) specification.

WAP Micro Browsers

To fit into a small wireless terminal, WAP uses a Micro Browser.

A Micro Browser is a small piece of software that makes minimal demands on hardware, memory and CPU. It can display information written in a restricted mark-up language called WML.

The Micro Browser can also interpret a reduced version of JavaScript called WMLScript.

Examples of WAP use

* Checking train table information
* Ticket purchase
* Flight check in
* Viewing traffic information
* Checking weather conditions
* Looking up stock values
* Looking up phone numbers
* Looking up addresses
* Looking up sport results

Technology used

There are two categories of mobile phones in the market, the first is WML supported and the latest one is xHTML supported. So there are basically two versions of each WAP site which gets called after identifying the mobile markup.

Networks supported

WAP is designed to work with most wireless networks such as CDPD, CDMA, GSM, PDC, PHS, TDMA, FLEX, ReFLEX, iDEN, TETRA, DECT, DataTAC, Mobitex.