Smart launches first wireless Internet access service in RP

Smart Communications Inc. launched over the weekend the country's first wireless Internet access service using newly-developed digital technologies.

Using the wireless application protocol (WAP), Smart subscribers using WAP-enabled handsets, will be able to get information and applications from a host of popular Internet web sites using their cellular phones instead of desktop or laptop computers.

"We are bringing the subscribers the power to surf the net right at their fingertips. With Smart WAP, they can surf any WAP-ready site in the net anytime, anywhere with their GSM cell phones," said Anastacio Martirez, head of Smart personal communications and mobile services.

With WAP, information and interactive applications from the Internet are accessed by using the wireless markup language which lets ordinary Internet content to fit into a mobile phone.

Since mobile phones have a limited memory and display size, it could not display a typical web page.

Among the net-based information that customers can access easier and faster through Smart WAP are the latest news, stock updates, flight information, traffic reports, television and movie schedules, weather updates, among others.

WAP works across many mobile network technologies and is intended to attract new subscribers and open up the mass market for mobile data services.

According to Martirez, an Internet service provider (ISP) is no longer necessary to access WAP services.

A subscriber merely has to activate his mobile phone's mobile data or fax service based on instructions included in the manual.

Smart, he said, will come out with informational brochures and print ads that will walk the subscriber through the simple process.

Local airtime rates for peak and off-peak hours will be charged, depending on the subscriber's existing airtime plan.

Smarts's arch rival Globe Telecom is also set to offer WAP as well as the general packet radio service (GPRS) technology designed to give Internet users very fast speeds of up 15 kilobits per second and lessen the call airtime cost.

With WAP and GPRS, the mobile network will become a subnet to the global Internet aside from providing mobility to Web services.

So far, people are slowly being introduced to wireless Internet service with Smart and Globe already offering e-mail, movie and basketball schedules, news, among other things. --