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T-Mobil Figures Indicate Low WAP Usage in Europe
By DAVID PRINGLE  WSJ.COM

European consumers are far from crazy about WAP, wireless-Internet usage
figures released by Deutsche Telekom AG's T-Mobil unit suggest.

The figures -- the first actual usage numbers from a European mobile
provider -- indicate that the typical owner of a WAP handset uses the
wireless Internet less than once a week on average. Moreover, the figures
show that just over 1% of T-Mobil's overall wireless subscribers use
WAP services.

T-Mobil said it is pleased with the level of usage of WAP, or Wireless
Application Protocol, a technology that allows specially equipped mobile
phones to access a subset of the Internet. But analysts said the figures
suggest that most consumers who have tried WAP services can't see a
compelling reason to use them on a regular basis.

In the figures, released last week, T-Mobil reported that 250,000 of its
13 million subscribers in Germany have purchased handsets capable of
accessing WAP sites since the service was launched in November. About
175,000 of this group -- or 1.3% of T-Mobil's total mobile subscribers
-- actually use the service, generating 35,000 WAP sessions daily. By
way of comparison, about 4% of NTT DoCoMo's subscribers in Japan were
using its i-mode wireless-Internet service six months after its launch
in February 1999.

While such services have been launched by mobile-phone operators across
Western Europe, T-Mobil is the first operator to announce usage figures.

T-Mobil has advertised the service heavily on television and in print,
spokeswoman Andrea Vey said. But she declined to say how much the company
has spent promoting its WAP services.

A shortage of compatible handsets has held back WAP, said Phil Kendall,
director of mobile-communications services at U.K. research firm
Strategy Analytics. "It is not T-Mobil's failing, but there aren't enough
people out there developing WAP services because there are not enough
handsets. It is the most appalling Catch-22 situation," Mr. Kendall
said. Analysts believe the shortage of WAP phones is particularly acute
in Germany.

Lowered Expectations

But WAP also has been criticized for failing to live up to
expectations. The standard, which has huge industry backing, has
been widely hyped in Europe as the technology that will allow people
to access the Internet from their mobile phones. Currently, however,
most WAP sites only offer a limited text-based service -- meaning they
haven't been able to grab many users' attention.

"There will be people using it every day to read news on the train,
but a lot of users are picking it up as a novelty and using it once a
month," said Matthew Nordan, a senior analyst with Forrester Research
in Amsterdam.

Further, the WAP standard has been beset with technical problems since
it first appeared in Europe last year.

Analysts believe that some consumers are becoming disillusioned with WAP,
creating negative sentiment against the whole concept of a wireless
Internet. "There has already been some user backlash," said Michele
Mackenzie, an analyst with research firm Ovum in London. "Operators need
to bring users' expectations in line with what they can offer." Ovum
has warned that Europe's mobile-phone industry doesn't have long
to get WAP right, arguing that several technologies could be used as
alternatives. DoCoMo already is planning to introduce i-mode in Europe,
and software companies Microsoft Corp. and Logica PLC have launched
wireless-Internet products that don't require WAP.

To be sure, the number of WAP handsets and services available to Europeans
are increasing all the time. And the standard itself is improving. Scott
Goldman, chief executive of the WAP Forum, said handsets being built
in accordance with the latest WAP specification will support color and
graphics, which are popular features of DoCoMo's i-mode service.

A Boost for WAP

Ms. Vey at T-Mobil said her company's new GPRS network should give WAP a
lift. Technology known as GPRS, or general packet radio services, allows
mobile phones to maintain an always-on connection, meaning that users
will be able to access WAP sites much more quickly than they can at the
moment. T-Mobil began offering the GPRS service to selected customers
last week as a run-up to a full launch in September.

Mr. Nordan at Forrester agrees that WAP usage is likely to increase
dramatically once GPRS networks are widespread. "It takes 10 seconds to
connect, several seconds to download each page. It is a pain to use. If
I had a GPRS phone, I would probably use it more," he said. DoCoMo's
successful i-mode service in Japan is run over a network that allows
for an always-on connection. But Mr. Nordan cautioned that it could
be a couple of years before substantial numbers of Europeans have
GPRS-compatible phones.

Nigel Deighton, research director with Gartner Group, said that operators
need to roll out GPRS networks out as fast as possible. "My personal
view is that WAP is finished without GPRS," he said.

European mobile-phone operators faced a difficult decision at the
beginning of this year about whether to launch WAP over existing networks
or wait for GPRS, according to Mr. Nordan. He said that they had to choose
between the risk of alienating casual users by launching a service that
isn't really ready or alienating business users and technology enthusiasts
who might switch to a rival operator offering WAP. "They were damned if
they do and damned if they don't," he said.