When WAP was first announced, it was hailed as the latest stage in an information culture that would allow people to access the things they need at a moment’s notice. WAP promised up to the minute news and local information that would revolutionise the way we lived, but failed to deliver.
The technology at the time of WAP’s introduction was limited by cost, so mobile phones had small monochrome screens, and were unable to show much in the way of information or pictures. The other major problem for users was that very few webmasters at the time offered a version of their site that would be suitable for use on the smaller screens of Mobile Phones, which meant that vast areas of the web were all but inaccessible.
The download speeds offered by early WAP phones were another hurdle, although had websites been available in a stripped down format, the access speed would have been much higher.
Of course in the intervening years since the first WAP phones, the state of mobile internet has improved enormously, with huge steps being taken in both the accessibility of individual web sites, and also in the ability of the phones to handle the information that they are sent at a reasonable speed.
The latest mobile internet standard 3G offers internet download speeds comparable with a home broadband connection, and provided that you have a good signal, it is possible to access information at high speed whenever you want to.
Perhaps the main selling points for the future of the mobile internet are in easing the interaction between the user and the publisher, for example making it a simple matter to post a video onto YouTube or another sharing site, update your blog on the go with a photo or your thoughts. The other major space for expansion in the mobile internet world is in local services, by which the mobile phone will transmit its location to the network, and you will receive appropriate adverts and local news such as traffic information that are suited to your exact position.
Since it was first introduced, mobile internet access has increased in importance to become a major part of how we use our mobile phones every day, and the more we come to require information at any given time, the more we will come to rely on having access to the internet wherever we are, and whenever we want it.