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Wap's it all about !!Mobile phones and the Internet are meant to be coming together! For less than fifty pounds you can buy a prepay WAP phone from Cellnet (and others soon). With this wonderful device, you are meant to be able to browse the wonders of the internet, do your banking, listen to and buy music, book theatre tickets or check the flight arrivals at Heathrow. However all is not perfect! This is not the Internet as most people know. It really is only text or very basic graphics, on a tiny screen with fiddly controls, at high cost (at least 10p per minute), with very slow connections from a very limited number of providers. As a gadget to play with, it can be fun; yet most users will never get a fraction of the utility they get out of a proper computer connection at a much lower price. Better will come over the years. By 2003 we should have UMTS phones, which will hopefully have colour screens, very high speed connections and maybe even video on demand. At the moment BT are testing GPRS connections for GSM handsets which should allow 115kbs data instead of the present 9600 baud stone-age limit. It has to be asked though, will people ever want to use their handsets as their Internet portal. There have been pocket televisions available for a decade or more, but most people prefer to sit and watch a proper screen. It is likely that the same will apply to the Internet. This is all the more likely for another reason, namely licence cost. At the moment the cost of UMTS licences are astronomical. The five licences available are going to cost literally billions to each of the networks. Even if they get a few million customers each, they will have to factor in an effective tax of a couple of hundred pounds a year per user. I believe that many people will stick with cheap GSM phones rather than pay a small fortune for new, perhaps bulkier, Internet handsets. But what about email, you might ask! Well most of the population do not need email on the move, and you can already get basic emails sent to your GSM phone via text messaging. You can set up an account for free at genie that sends emails to all of the UK networks. Lycos have a similar portal as well. As Callforless has been set up to help people to save on their phone costs, it cannot in all conscience recommend that people buy WAP at the moment. Within a few months it is likely that the majority of handsets sold will be WAP enabled, but at the moment they are not worth the premium price being charged. |
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Send email to questions at callforless.co.uk
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