Press Release 9 February 1999

Wireless Application Protocol Forum - Fort Worth Meeting Recap

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The Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) Forum membership met in Fort Worth, Texas the week of February 1 to further define WAP - the global, de-facto standard for accessing the Internet - anytime, anywhere - on all wireless networks and devices. The WAP Forum is composed of handset manufacturers, wireless carriers, leading infrastructure providers, PC software companies and other companies delivering solutions to the wireless industry. Highlights of the meeting include:

• The WAP Forum announced that its membership has increased to 91 companies. More than a dozen companies from around the world have joined in the last two weeks.
  
  
• Four new working groups have been created since the last WAP Forum meeting in Kyoto, Japan in December 1998. These include:
  • Asian Expert Group - focused on Asian issues, networks, and languages
  • Telematics Expert Group - focused on Telematics applications of WAP, such as in-car systems
  • SMS Expert Group - focused on Short Message Service (SMS) issues and technology
  • Education & Communications Expert Group - focused on WAP marketing messages and branding issues
  
  
  
• New versions of WML, WMLScript, WBXML and other WAP specifications were voted on by the membership and reached the "Proposed Specification" level, which means they will reach the final approval stage in three months. These revised versions will further facilitate interoperability between applications. Several brand new specifications, such as WTA (Wireless Telephony Application) and User Agent Caching, also reached the Proposed Specification level.
  
  
• The new WML specification includes a large number of changes developed in conjunction with the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). These are designed to help make it possible to converge WML and HTML-NG in the next few years. The WAP Forum and W3C are working together to make the unified "global information space" a reality.
  
  
• The WAP Forum announced, for the first time, that its next meeting in Montreux, Switzerland will feature a Developer's Track. By invitation-only, this track will be targeted to the needs and issues of application developers and content providers. The Montreux meeting will be held April 11-16, 1999.

MEDIACONTACT:
Vince Butler, BSMG Worldwide
At CTIA Wireless '99:
(214) 232-1686 - cellular
(888) 444-4513 - pager
(972) 830-2879 - office
[email protected]