This paper is based on a transcript of a presentation given by the author to Airline IT representatives at the "IATA Airlines@Internet.99" conference, under the title "Reaching the Mobile Traveler with WAP -- and why you want to know!". By focussing on applications that are expected to be of interest to the audience, such as customer care and provision of flight information/e-tickets to mobile users, the presentation and the present paper attempt to give a flavor of the huge potential of the "Wireless Application Protocol (WAP)" to deliver content to customers via a personal device, where and when it matters. The paper briefly introduces WAP and its features, outlines possible scenarios for provisioning WAP service offerings, and describes their effects on any existing HTML infrastructure.
The complete WAP specifications exceed 1000 pages. This paper can of course merely touch upon the major technical aspects. For more detailed information, the reader is referred to the list of references at the end of the paper and the contact address of the author.
By: Stefan G. Hild
Published in: RZ3130 in 1999
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