Two drivers have taken the market by surprise in recent years: wireless is the first and the second is the Internet and Internet technology. At the end of 1998 there were around 260 million wireless mobile users and growth continues at over ten million new subscribers per month. The latest forecast figures by Delson Group indicate that the total number of wireless cellular subscribers world-wide will reach two billion by 2005. Convergence of wireless and Internet will be one of the hottest topics in the coming years | Broadband Wireless Mobile 3G and Beyond. Edited by Willie W. Lu Copyright 2002 John Wiley Sons Ltd. ISBN 0-471-48661-2 4 Emerging Wireless Applications and Protocols Introduction Two drivers have taken the market by surprise in recent years wireless is the first and the second is the Internet and Internet technology. At the end of 1998 there were around 260 million wireless mobile users and growth continues at over ten million new subscribers per month. The latest forecast figures by Delson Group indicate that the total number of wireless cellular subscribers world-wide will reach two billion by 2005. Convergence of wireless and Internet will be one of the hottest topics in the coming years. Wireless Mobile Internet or WMI and its devices are coming to the market in ever increasing numbers all over the world. The investment in this business will be over 100 billion dollars within the next several years. The various sectors of the industry have also been active on the standards front and in the creation of alliances and forums that will carry the momentum forward. The WAP Forum and the WAP Wireless Application Protocol standards are particularly significant since this industry standard insulates the Internet-based application from the wireless mobile network infrastructure. Thus content service and application can now be decoupled from delivery bear network . This allows the applications to run over wireless mobile networks both current and future thereby creating a massive new global market for wireless value-added services. Wireless mobile users will not just want to access all the information that is available on the Internet via a phone. It therefore makes better sense if the operator selects an appropriate service portfolio that is tailored to mobile subscribers. It is also impractical to deliver the content to a phone in the same manner as that supplied to a PC. The graphics and hyperlinks need to be stripped out but this only represents a Band-Aid .
