0You've probably heard this abbreviation, so today we'll try to figure out what is WAP and what does WAP mean. Many of our readers probably know nothing about the inconvenient Internet if they didn't experience this technology, and in fact, they are lucky.
What is Wireless Application Protocol
27 years ago, in 1997, Ericsson, Motorola, Nokia, and Unwired Planet (known as the developer of NetFront browsers) joined forces to develop a mobile internet called WAP. The technology was fully named as Wireless Application Protocol — a wireless protocol for data services — and was designed for displaying websites on phones during the "monochrome" era.
Let's start by understanding the terminology:
- What is WAP push? This is a special message containing a link to a specific internet resource, such as WAP, PDA, or a full-fledged website.
- What is WAP internet? It is access to the internet using the corresponding protocol.
From the union to the implementation of wireless internet, a year passed, and the first attempt, as usual, turned out to be flawed – WAP 1.0 had a large number of shortcomings and resembled more of a concept of how cell phone manufacturers envision mobile internet, rather than a genuinely usable online protocol.
The truly popularized version became the improved WAP 1.1, released in 1999, which developers subsequently slightly tweaked, fundamentally changing nothing. The result of such activity led to the appearance of those websites with a gray background and blue links – a monument to the WAP 1.x technology.
The foundation of WAP was the WML markup language – it represents a "desktop computer" HTML of the early 2000s, only limited in capabilities to the extent that it could be assimilated by mobile phones, which struggled with polyphonic melodies and often did not even support MMS.
What is a WAP in networking? Accessing the internet from a mobile phone in the early days of WAP was not a cheap pleasure, especially when the connection was made through a telephone line with per-minute billing – using CSD technology. Therefore, getting into it required a substantial amount in the account. Just consider that for three minutes online (whether downloading or simply reading text as long as the site was open), you were charged one US dollar, and the speed was approximately 10 Kbps. Even a monochrome image took 5–8 seconds to download.
While you were typing the address of the next site on the sluggish keyboard (typing in SMS text was quick, but in browsers, the phone's reactions slowed down due to processor load), a little more money was deducted from you. It was impossible to save the text and read it later; in early internet-enabled phones, there was no option to bookmark sites – you had to memorize addresses. Now you have the option to choose between Opera, Chrome, or Safari, but before the advent of Java, from 2000 to 2006, one had to use utterly rudimentary default internet applications. These applications could easily fail to open certain websites on specific phone models – just because.
Sometimes, phones under browser load emitted a squeak and turned off (especially Siemens was notorious for this), or they froze (let's not point fingers at Motorola). The remedy for this was a restart, with or without removing the battery.
On the other hand, even back then, the younger sibling of the full-fledged computer internet, WWW, was much more informative than the senseless entertainment newsletters in SMS for which mobile operators charged subscribers exorbitant amounts. Moreover, with online access everywhere mobile networks were available, internet chats, forums, and other uncomplicated means of communication between strangers flourished vividly. Before this, only affluent individuals who had enough money to buy a personal computer (yes, it sounded proud back then) could afford such a luxury!
The sense of free communication was unparalleled; life was bustling on primitive text-based websites, and users became attached to their phones, engaging in intense debates, sharing information, and sometimes even falling in love online.
The release of WAP 2.0 in 2005 brought with it the xHTML markup language and limited support for CSS – this was sufficient for websites to finally become colorful. Modern (for that time) mobile phones learned to fill their memory with ringtones, images, Java games, and, for owners of particularly "cool" models, videos. Many WAP sites, however, operated in two versions – for the monochrome WAP 1.x, which was compatible with any internet-accessible mobile phone, and WAP 2.0, which offered more capabilities for powerful devices. In this version, network security was also improved, and sites became more successful in combating wireless network attacks.
Benefits and Limitations
Mobile traffic became increasingly popular every year due to the development of various portable devices that allow access to the Internet from almost anywhere in the world with coverage. Because of this, content providers responded accordingly to this need by offering users new versions of web resources in WAP/PDA formats. The use of these formats had both positive and negative aspects that should be thoroughly understood. The main drawback that characterized WAP versions of websites was the almost complete absence of heavy multimedia content. This means that WAP-enabled web browsers were primarily designed for reading only. It was not possible to watch movies, play video recordings, or use mobile applications on them.
Interestingly, the advantages of such web resources were based precisely on their drawback. This is because all the information was presented in a compact and mobile-friendly format suitable for web browsing on mobile devices.
Due to the fact that the Internet was not sufficiently fast in many places, lighter pages loaded much faster than those loaded with various types of information and content. Moreover, it is worth noting that the lightweight nature of website pages also contributed to the financial savings of users, as internet prices were often very high to load various types of web portal elements. WAP sites also stood out in that they had a simple and user-friendly usability and good navigation. Additionally, the technology had decent security features.
Impact on Mobile Communications
Despite being considered outdated network technology and not used in practice today, it had a significant impact on mobile communication. However, if you're wondering "what are WAP push messages?" many modern smartphones support this function, allowing clickable links to be inserted into messages.
WAP internet did not disappear from phones immediately. The first "nail in the coffin" was the release of the Opera Mini browser, which allowed users to access the "big internet" from less powerful mobile phones. This was a joy, especially with Opera Mini Mod, which supported tabs and page saving. Yes, before that, to view an image, users had to load the site (spending money on loading site images, approximately a dollar per megabyte), click "view image," load a new page with a preview (small) of the image and a button "view in full size" (spending traffic for the second time), after pressing the button, spending traffic again on the fully loaded image, and finally downloading it. Then press "back" and spend internet data on redrawing the site again. Opera Mini relieved internet users from such struggles.
Then smartphones based on Symbian and Windows Mobile became more advanced and, to some extent, learned to open websites that used JavaScript with all its interactive features.
This is when, on a website, pressing a button triggers the button, and the entire website does not flash and reload from scratch. Previously, for example, to start playing a melody, you pressed "play/pause" without leaving the page but navigated back and forth across different pages on the site for such an action. If you were waiting for an email notification on the site (not all phones had a built-in email app, and some understood only Latin letters), the site itself did not refresh the message information — you had to press "Menu - refresh" on the phone and reload the page with the list of incoming emails each time to see if there was a new notification. Instant messaging was not even a possibility at that time.
However, even early relatively powerful smartphones from Nokia/Samsung/SonyEricsson (not to be confused with regular phones) on Symbian (2002-2005) somehow supported Opera due to poor Java performance. In the end, within half an hour to an hour on the internet, Opera would consume all the smartphone's RAM. So much so that after receiving an SMS, you couldn't access incoming messages until you closed Opera and opened it again. This continued until Opera was officially released as a .sis application for Symbian S60 in 2009.
The final transition from WAP adapted for less powerful mobile phones to accessing full-fledged websites from a smartphone occurred only after the announcement of the Apple iPhone in 2007. After that, the release of mobile devices (regardless of brand) incapable of working with websites without adaptation became rare. Online services experienced significant development and were able to provide users with access to any information.
In the early 2020s, global telecommunications operators gradually ceased support for internet access through this protocol. Now you know what is a WAP network.
